CampsiteScan

Two booking systems hold California campgrounds, and neither one knows the other exists. ReserveCalifornia covers state parks and state beaches. Recreation.gov covers federal land: national parks, national forests, BLM and Army Corps sites. You will not find one system’s campgrounds listed on the other. Search recreation.gov for a state beach and you come up empty, then assume the place does not exist.

Searches for “recreation gov” have climbed 250% in California over five years, which means a great many people are discovering this all at once. Below is how the two systems divide the state.

Who runs what

ReserveCalifornia holds every state park and state beach with a campground. That covers most of the coast (Refugio, El Capitan, Carpinteria, Leo Carrillo, Point Mugu, Doheny, San Onofre, San Elijo, South Carlsbad, Crystal Cove, New Brighton, Sunset, Manresa, Half Moon Bay, Sonoma Coast and the rest), the inland state parks (Big Basin, Calaveras Big Trees, Humboldt Redwoods, Mount Tamalpais), and the state recreation areas around lakes (Folsom Lake, Lake Perris, Brannan Island). We track 115 ReserveCalifornia parks and 304 campground sections.

Recreation.gov holds Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Joshua Tree and the other national parks [VERIFY: which California national parks currently take campground reservations on recreation.gov, and for which campgrounds], every national forest campground that takes reservations (Los Padres, Inyo, Sierra, Stanislaus, Tahoe, Eldorado and the others), and BLM land. We track 500 recreation.gov campgrounds in California.

A rough rule of thumb: a name containing “State” belongs to ReserveCalifornia. A name containing “National,” or one sitting inside a forest, belongs to recreation.gov. Lake Tahoe is where this trips people up. Emerald Bay and D.L. Bliss are state parks, so ReserveCalifornia. The forest campgrounds ringing the lake are recreation.gov. Our campgrounds index lists which system each one uses.

Release rules, side by side

ReserveCalifornia opens each date six months ahead, one day at a time, at 8:00am Pacific. Want July 4? Book at 8am on January 4. Every park, every day, same rule.

Recreation.gov follows no single rule. The Yosemite campgrounds (Upper, Lower and North Pines, Wawona, Hodgdon Meadow, Tuolumne Meadows) release in one-month blocks on the 15th of each month at 7:00am Pacific, five months ahead. Arrivals July 15 to August 14 open on March 15. [VERIFY: the 2027 Yosemite schedule] Most other recreation.gov campgrounds use a rolling window, but both the length and the release hour shift from one campground to the next. Read the campground’s own page before setting an alarm. [VERIFY: the default recreation.gov booking window and release hour for California forest campgrounds]

Camp 4 in Yosemite runs a daily lottery in peak season, entered the day before. [VERIFY: 2027 dates] Joshua Tree’s reservable campgrounds (Jumbo Rocks, Indian Cove, Black Rock, Cottonwood, Ryan) take bookings in the cool season; Hidden Valley, Belle and White Tank are first-come. [VERIFY: the 2026-27 reservation vs first-come list and any summer closures]

Cancellation rules

Both systems charge you to cancel, and both return the site to the pool once you do.

ReserveCalifornia takes a reservation fee at booking and a cancellation fee when you drop it. [VERIFY: current amounts and the same-day cutoff]

Recreation.gov takes a cancellation fee, and cancelling same-day or late forfeits the first night. [VERIFY: current amounts and the exact late-cancellation window]

Timing is where they part ways in practice. On ReserveCalifornia, held and expired sites drop at 8am alongside the new date, which explains why 47% of the 329 alerts we sent between August 13 and September 10, 2026 fired at 8am. On recreation.gov, a cancelled site reappears whenever the person cancels, and that skews toward evenings. Our true-cancellation alerts, the ones outside 8am, peaked at 5pm, 8pm and 4pm, and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Which is harder to book

ReserveCalifornia, by a wide margin, if a weekend is what you want.

Since August 17, 2026, we have checked availability across both systems daily. On ReserveCalifornia, 83% of Friday and Saturday nights were sold out, against 41% of midweek nights. On recreation.gov, 66% of weekend nights were sold out, against 45% midweek.

That reflects what each system holds, not which website performs worse. The state system has the beaches, and in California “beach camping” (52 on Google’s index) gets searched about as often as “california camping” itself (54). The federal system holds far more campgrounds that sit inland, higher up and further from a freeway. Of the 500 recreation.gov campgrounds we track, plenty have room most weekends. Of the 36 coastal state campgrounds we rate, 10 had nothing bookable on any night across the three weeks from September 10 to 30.

The exceptions prove the point. Yosemite Valley’s three campgrounds scored 98 out of 100 on sellouts during that window. Plaskett Creek in Big Sur (Los Padres NF, recreation.gov) scored 100. Put a federal campground on the coast or in Yosemite and it behaves exactly like a state beach. The live list sits on hardest campgrounds to book.

The campgrounds on neither system

Some of the most searched-for California campgrounds appear on neither site, and no alert service can watch them, ours included.

In Big Sur, Ventana, Fernwood, Riverside and Big Sur Campground and Cabins are private. Searches for “big sur campground and cabins” are up 170%, and every one of those people has to book direct. Hipcamp lists private land (up 50% in searches) and sits on neither public system. The beach resorts work the same way: Flying Flags in Buellton (not actually on the beach), Dillon Beach Resort, and Avila/Pismo Coast Village.

Private sites often come with friendlier cancellation terms and no 8am race. They also cost more, and none of them put you on the sand at a state beach.

What this means for your booking

Choose the system by the park, then learn that system’s release rule, because for a summer weekend it is the only reliable way in. Miss it and sites do come back. Three quarters of the ones we caught returned within a week of the arrival date.

Set a free alert on the campground you wanted, on either system, and we email you the moment a site comes back: campsitescan.com.

Booking sites, for reference: reservecalifornia.com and recreation.gov.