Cottonwood Creek
October 2026
About
Overview
Cottonwood Creek Campground is located on Highway 89, four miles south of Sierraville. Its location makes it a great base camp for a variety of recreational activities, including fishing, hunting, hiking and biking. This facility is operated and maintained by Lake Tahoe Hospitality LLC for the Tahoe National Forest.
Recreation
Cottonwood Creek Botanical Trail and Overlook Trail are both short, foot trails that begin in the campground. The surrounding area offers additional trails and fishing opportunities.
Facilities
The campground offers several single-family campsites, each equipped with a picnic table and campfire ring. Vault toilets, drinking water and trash collection are provided.
Natural Features
The campground sits along Cottonwood Creek, in a stand of Jeffrey pine, and red and white fir trees. The forest provides shade and privacy between sites, but noise from the highway can be heard within the campground.
Contact Info
This location has limited staffing. Please call (530) 606-3978 for general information.
Nearby Attractions
Lake Tahoe is located about 40 minutes from the campground. Scenic Tahoe offers excellent boating, kayaking, fishing, hiking and scenic driving opportunities.
Sardine Lakes, within the beautiful Lakes Basin, is a 35-minute drive northwest of the campground, via the Golden Chain/Highway 49. Stampede Reservoir is a 45-minute drive southeast.
Amenities
Phone: 530-994-3401
Is COTTONWOOD CREEK 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 COTTONWOOD CREEK in Sierraville, CA 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 COTTONWOOD CREEK for cancellations is the paid part.