Tailwater East Campground
October 2026
About
Overview
The Tailwater East Campground is located within the Dam Complex at the Coralville Lake Project. The Coralville Lake Project is a multiple use project providing primary benefits in flood control and low flow augmentation, and secondary benefits in recreation, fish and wildlife management and forest management. Coralville Lake provides many recreational opportunities, including boating, camping, hiking, mountain biking, lake and river fishing, swimming, water skiing, picnicking and hunting.
Recreation
Visitors enjoy Coralville Lake for camping, boating, fishing, swimming and water activities. Anglers will find large and smallmouth bass, crappie, walleye and catfish. Several trails are within the Dam Complex, including Squire Point, Woodpecker Trail, Tailwater Riverwalk and barrier-free Veterans Trail. The Devonian Fossil Gorge is just below the dam, offering a unique opportunity to explore a 375-million-year old sea floor and discover fossil remains of sea life that once inhabited this tropical marine environment. Twenty discovery points can be found throughout the site along with a cell phone audio tour. The Turkey Creek Disc Golf Course is located in the Dam Complex and offers nine partially wooden and open holes.
Facilities
The Tailwater East Campground is located on the east bank of the Iowa River below the Coralville Lake Dam. The campground offers 28 campsites to include full hook-up campsites, standard electric campsites, and non-electric walk-to tent campsites. Amenities include a modern restroom and shower facility, fish cleaning station, and a boat ramp for accessing the Iowa River. The campground fee booth is located in the West Overlook Campground.
Natural Features
Coralville Lake is located in the Iowa River Valley, just north of Iowa City. The Tailwater East Campground lies among a heavily wooded forest of mixed hardwood species on the east side of the dam. Wildlife is abundant throughout the project. Whitetail deer, turkeys, pheasants, waterfowl, song birds and other species roam the lands around the lake.
Nearby Attractions
Iowa City/Coralville offers the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, University of Iowa campus, hospital and clinics, numerous restaurants and shops as well as Coral Ridge Mall. Cedar Rapids has wonderful cultural, historic and ethnic attractions such as The National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library and is the home of the Kernels Professional Baseball Club. West Branch boasts the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site and Presidential Library/Museum. At Amana Colonies visit seven quaint villages with outstanding restaurants, wineries, historic sites and specialty shops. Kalona is known as the "Quilt Capital of Iowa" and is home to an Old Order Amish and Mennonite Community.
Amenities
Is TAILWATER EAST CAMPGROUND fully booked?
A campground showing no availability is almost never full for good. People cancel — plans change, weather turns, someone books three weekends and keeps one — and the site goes straight back into the booking system, usually without warning and often at odd hours. The reason sold-out campgrounds feel impossible is not that sites never free up; it is that nobody is watching at the moment they do.
CampHawk watches TAILWATER EAST CAMPGROUND in Iowa City, IA for you. We recheck it every 15 seconds, around the clock, and the moment a site opens we send a text, an email and a push notification — and on Recreation.gov we can put the site straight into your cart, so it is held while you get to your phone.
Searching is free and needs no account — the calendar above is live right now. Watching TAILWATER EAST CAMPGROUND for cancellations is the paid part.