Governor Knowles State Forest
October 2026
About
This 55-mile-long forest in northwestern Wisconsin parallels the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway and offers camping, canoeing/kayaking, hiking, horseback riding, biking, hunting, fishing, cross-country skiing and snowmobiling.
Three campgrounds (St. Croix Family Campground, Trade River Equestrian Campground, and Sioux Portage Group Camp) are available. There are also nine primitive backpack sites available by contacting the forest headquarters for a special permit.
Is Governor Knowles State Forest 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 Governor Knowles State Forest in Grantsburg, WI 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, with a link straight to the booking page.
Searching is free and needs no account — the calendar above is live right now. Watching Governor Knowles State Forest for cancellations is the paid part.