The Forest Service published 11 separate proposed recreation fee notices in the Federal Register on September 8, 2026, and the cheapest one would put $5 a night on 10 campgrounds in Oregon’s Malheur National Forest. If you camp in any of these forests, the clock on the current price started that day.
Federal law is why you get warning. The Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act at 16 U.S.C. 6803(b) requires a six-month advance notice before the agency establishes a proposed fee site. Every one of the 11 notices carries the same line: the fees “would be established no earlier than six months following the publication of this notice.” Earliest possible start is March 8, 2027.
What is actually proposed
All of this is read straight off the notices, September 15, 2026.
Malheur (Oregon): $5 per night at Billy Fields, Crescent, Elk Creek, Head O’ Boulder Forest Camp, Little Crane, McNaughton Spring, North Fork Malheur, Oregon Mine, Pine Creek Horse Camp and Slide Creek campgrounds. Plus $75 a night for five guard station and work center rentals.
Manti-La Sal (Utah): $15 per night at Porcupine Rim, Ferron Canyon and Chicken Creek. Group sites $30 to $50.
Green Mountain and Finger Lakes (Vermont and New York): $25 a night at Somerset Airfield Campground, plus a $5 per vehicle per day fee at Grout Pond, or $35 for the year.
Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison (Colorado): a $5 per person per day hiking permit and a $25 per site per night overnight camping permit for Blue Lakes in the Mt Sneffels Wilderness.
Cleveland (California): $4 per person per day to hike to Cedar Creek Falls and Three Sisters Falls.
The remaining notices cover Ashley, Six Rivers, Siuslaw, Ouachita, El Yunque and Tongass, mostly cabin and guard station rentals in the $50 to $75 range.
The part that decides whether your pass helps
Two different fee types are in play and they behave differently. A standard amenity fee is a day-use fee, and your America the Beautiful pass covers it. The Green Mountain notice says so for Grout Pond. An expanded amenity fee is the campground fee, and the pass does not touch it. The Siuslaw notice states outright that America the Beautiful “would not cover the proposed special recreation permit fee.” We wrote up that split here.
One more number worth knowing: the $8 Recreation.gov reservation charge is a platform transaction fee, and the notices say it “is not a Forest Service recreation fee” under the act. It stacks on top.
What we cannot tell you
Whether each of these sites is free today. The notices say “establish,” which normally means a site that is not currently a fee site, but fs.usda.gov returned 403 to every request we made on September 15, 2026, so we could not open the forest pages and confirm site by site. Do not assume a site listed above is free right now.
What to do
If you use one of these campgrounds, go this fall or next spring at the current price, and check the posted board at the site, which beats any website including this one.
If you want to weigh in, note that there is no regulations.gov docket for these. Each notice gives a mailing address, and the proposal then goes to a Recreation Resource Advisory Committee. Our national forests hub covers how forest-level rules get set, and what a forest stay limit actually comes from covers the other half of the cost of camping there: how long you are allowed to stay.
Sources
- Proposed Recreation Fee Sites, Malheur National Forest (91 FR 57131, September 8, 2026)
- Proposed Recreation Fee Sites, Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forests (91 FR 57127, September 8, 2026)
- Proposed Recreation Fee Sites, Manti-La Sal National Forest (91 FR 57129, September 8, 2026)
- Proposed Recreation Fee Sites, Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests (91 FR 57131, September 8, 2026)
- Proposed Recreation Fee Sites, Siuslaw National Forest (91 FR 57129, September 8, 2026)
- Proposed Recreation Fee Sites, Cleveland National Forest (91 FR 57128, September 8, 2026)