Campgrounder Journal
The accessible badge nobody actually checks
How we built the feature, why an icon with nothing behind it is worse than no icon at all, and what it took to check 256 campgrounds one by one.
What the badge means
You’ll only ever see
one of three things.
An icon that shows up on every listing isn’t telling you anything. So we kept it to three, and the third one is by far the most common.
Confirmed accessible
174
The agency has published which sites are accessible, and often the site numbers, what the ground is like, and how far you’ll be from a restroom. We read it and quote it back to you.
Partly accessible
82
Some of it works and some of it doesn’t. An accessible restroom but no marked site. A cabin but not the campground. We tell you which, in plain words.
Not published
5,298
Nobody has written it down. That doesn’t mean the place is inaccessible, it means we can’t tell you, and calling ahead is the only honest thing we can offer.
Counts read from the live catalogue on September 3, 2026. The federal recreation database publishes accessibility text for about one campground in a hundred, which is why that last number is so big. An empty field beats a guess.
How we checked
Somebody had to
read the PDFs.
There’s no national list of accessible campsites. There are fifty state park systems, six federal agencies, and an awful lot of PDFs. So the 256 come from 130 separate sources, each one named on the listing: the California State Parks Accessible Features guide, the Michigan DNR, Texas Parks and Wildlife, one national park’s accessibility page at a time.
You can check our work instead of trusting it. Here’s what one of them actually says.
Texas Parks and Wildlife confirms several wheelchair-accessible sites here: full hookup sites 18 and 19 in Piney Hill, electric site 61 in Copperas Creek, with a roll-in shower and handrails at that restroom, and tent sites with water 27 and 28 in Deer Run. Cabins 12 and 14 are also wheelchair accessible.
Lost Pines, Bastrop State Park, Texas · source: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
Site numbers. Hookups. Which restroom has the handrails. That’s what you actually plan around, and it’s why this took months instead of an afternoon.
Where they are
Where we’ve
found the most.
This is really two things at once: how much accessible camping a state has, and how good its parks department is at writing it down. Washington and California sit at the top because their accessibility guides are genuinely excellent.
| State | Relative total | Confirmed | Partly | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washington | 19 | 16 | 35 | |
| California | 23 | 3 | 26 | |
| Michigan | 11 | 6 | 17 | |
| Colorado | 7 | 4 | 11 | |
| Utah | 8 | 2 | 10 | |
| Oregon | 7 | 2 | 9 | |
| Florida | 4 | 5 | 9 | |
| Georgia | 6 | 2 | 8 | |
| Virginia | 6 | 1 | 7 | |
| Maine | 5 | 1 | 6 | |
| New Hampshire | 4 | 2 | 6 | |
| Indiana | 1 | 5 | 6 |
State parks are running circles around the federal system.
161 of the 256 are state parks. 51 are national parks. Forest Service land accounts for 28, even though it’s the biggest category in the app by a mile. State agencies publish this stuff. Federal recreation data mostly doesn’t carry the field at all, which is a paperwork problem rather than a ramps problem, and it’s the main reason this page isn’t longer.
Ten places to start
Ten good places
to start.
Spread around the country, all of them confirmed by the agency that runs them. Tap any one for the full listing, where the source and the exact wording live.
- Yosemite Valley, California · National Park · $35
Designated accessible sites with paved routes to restrooms and accessible tables. Two Lower Pines sites carry power outlets for medical equipment.
Source: National Park Service, Yosemite National ParkConfirmed
- Crater Lake National Park, Oregon · National Park · $32
Five RV sites designated accessible, two with electrical hookups, with paved parking, roads and paths to water, restrooms and trails.
Source: National Park Service, Crater Lake, via Recreation.govConfirmed
- Trinidad, California · State Park · $35
Accessible sites 91, 92 and 94 in Agate Campground, where all four cabins are wheelchair accessible, though the nearest restroom is 200 to 300 yards away.
Source: California State Parks, Accessible Features guideConfirmed
- Bastrop, Texas · State Park · $22
Full hookup sites 18 and 19, electric site 61 with a roll-in shower and handrails at that restroom, tent sites 27 and 28, and two accessible cabins.
Source: Texas Parks and Wildlife DepartmentConfirmed
- Zion National Park, Utah · National Park · $20
Specific accessible sites in Loop A, including site A016hc, with paved roads and accessible walkways throughout the campground.
Source: National Park Service, Zion, via Recreation.govConfirmed
- Willamette Valley, Oregon · State Park · $26
Two campsites and four cabins with universal access features, plus a paved brick path from the parking area to the South Falls viewpoint.
Source: Oregon State ParksConfirmed
- Shenandoah National Park, Virginia · National Park · $30
Site D163 is a designated accessible group site on the federal booking system, which matters if you travel with people who help you.
Source: Recreation.gov, National Park ServiceConfirmed
- Pictured Rocks, Michigan · National Lakeshore · $20
Two of the campground’s 36 sites are designated wheelchair accessible, on the Lake Superior shore.
Source: National Park Service, Pictured Rocks National LakeshoreConfirmed
- Ilwaco, Washington · State Park · $35
One of the park’s yurts has a deck built to be wheelchair accessible, per Washington State Parks’ own brochure.
Source: Washington State ParksConfirmed
- Grand Canyon South Rim, Arizona · National Park · $18
There are wheelchair-accessible sites, though without RV hookups. Ask for one when you reserve, because the exact site numbers aren’t published.
Source: National Park Service accessibility guideConfirmed
Worth knowing
Nobody tells you
about the Access Pass.
If you’re a US citizen or permanent resident with a permanent disability that seriously limits a major life activity, you qualify for the Interagency Access Pass. It’s free, it’s good for life, and six agencies honor it: the National Park Service, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation.
Picking one up in person at any of a thousand-plus federal recreation sites costs nothing. Ordering the physical card online adds a $10 processing fee, and there’s a digital version through Recreation.gov you can use right away. Bring photo ID and one document showing permanent disability: a signed note from your doctor, or paperwork from the VA, Social Security, or a state vocational rehab agency.
You’ll read everywhere that the pass gets you half off camping. The agencies don’t say that.
What it actually gets you is a discount on expanded amenity fees, camping included, at a lot of sites. Six agencies, six sets of rules, so the amount moves around and some places don’t discount camping at all. Call ahead before you count on a number. Better to hear that here than at the kiosk.
Further reading
A few things
worth reading.
Campgrounder Journal
Zion has a wheelchair that goes where wheelchairs don’t
Zion is the first national park to own and maintain an all-terrain wheelchair for public use. It is free, it is parked at the visitor center, and it changes who gets to stand under Weeping Rock.
National Park Service
NPS Accessibility
The service-wide hub, with a page for each park. The individual park pages are where the useful detail hides, and they’re the source behind a lot of our national park listings.
Recreation.gov
Digital America the Beautiful passes
Where the digital Access Pass comes from, and where most federal campground bookings actually happen. We hand you over here rather than taking your reservation ourselves.
US Forest Service
Forest Service Access Pass
The Forest Service runs more campgrounds than anyone else in the country. This is their own guidance on the pass and on getting around national forest land.
Community
Disabled Hikers
Trail guides written by disabled hikers, with real detail on grade, surface and obstacles instead of a yes-or-no label. Honestly the best model out there for how this should be written.
What we don’t know yet
256 isn’t enough.
That’s under five percent of the campgrounds in the app. The other 5,298 show nothing instead of a guess, which is the right call and still a lousy answer if you’re the one trying to plan a trip. Two things move that number: agencies publishing the field at all, and people who have actually been there telling us what they found.
If we got something wrong, or if you’ve been somewhere we’ve marked unknown, please write. A note saying “site 14 has a paved pad but the restroom door is too narrow” is worth more to us than another database. Corrections go into the listing, with credit to whoever told us.
About this page
It’s built from the same design tokens as the app, in both themes. Every bit of text on it clears 4.5 to 1 against its background, and the faintest step in our type ramp isn’t used here at all. Status is never just a color. The tables have real headers, the theme switch is a real pair of buttons, and nothing moves or animates. If any of that falls down for you, that’s a bug and we want to hear about it.