Bear River Park & Campground

Sites 1-4 are walk in, the rest are drive up. All sites are right on the riverbank. Gold panning is popular here. Quiet campground with the relaxing sound of the river.

Four years running and eight trips under our belt, we love camping here. Only once was it not enjoyable, and that was last year when all of the "new" campers came out of the woodwork during quarantine and couldn't understand campground rules to save their lives.

That said, our group adores Bear River. It offers rather level (if not flat) tent camping, and a few RV spots as well. Each spot has a fire ring, grill and picnic table. Their reservation site will let you know when they abide fire season safety and don't allow fires of any kind, so you have time to prepare. The on-site bathrooms are cleaned daily and roomy. You'll need light even before the sun sets though, it gets dark quickly in there.

Depending on which site you choose, accessing the river can take some work, but a quick trip to the day use area provides very easy access. Our favorite spot has some easy climbing access, and we bring our chairs down and relax riverside all day long.

There will almost always be several gold panning folks, and they almost always keep to themselves and don't disturb campers.

The air is deliciously clean, the river provides a calming soundtrack at night, and the rangers are friendly and helpful.

Animal-wise, we have seen everything from chickens to deer to a bear once, but it was absolutely terrified to see humans and fled immediately. Always know your surroundings and read up on your site - there will always be useful safety tips!

Greeted with trash and cigarette butts littering the park. Spent 15 minutes picking up trash so campsite was decent. Homeless drug addicts resided in the next site over. Random people came at all times to park car while tenants ran out to car. Then car left quickly. That’s a drug deal.
Bags and trash littered their site. They rarely came out of their tents. Our last night homeless people came through our camp to rummage through the trash. They only left when we called the cops.
Random car yelled f*&$ you at my little boys. Horrible.
I only gave it one star for the physical beauty.

This campground got a lot of negative reviews in the past for having a large year round transient population, but Placer County’s new online reservation system seems to have resolved that. The campsites are all along the beautiful Bear River. There are a couple of vault toilets. No potable water. Nice picnic tables and fire pits at each campsite. There is a significant amount of low bushes and brush between the campsites and the river. There’s quite a bit of poison oak so be aware. MOST of the campers there are folks like us just looking to relax. Unfortunately there are some patrons here that are obnoxious, trashy people. The people at the campsite next to ours didn’t feel like going to the vault toilets to use the bathroom. They instead used the beach next to the river to go #1 AND #2. Super fun to wake up to that in the morning complete with the toilet paper they used. 🤢