Best Campgrounds near Townsend, MT

This property has been freshly updated with natural rocks, landscaping and upscale amenities. The staff is outgoing and friendly. We have been going here for over 10 years and the pools at different temperatures are heavenly and refreshing. Family oriented, clean sites and cabins sit along a running creek. Bathrooms and showers are centrally located, warm, secure and clean.

This is a typical KOA. First the good: Friendly helpful staff until their gone at closing time. Little mini store with a few essentials. Clean bathrooms and showers and clean laundry room with several washers/dryers.$2.00 per load to wash. Can't remember how much to dry. Very cool pinball machine that costs 25 cents per game. Fun fun fun! Another bathroom/shower in middle of park but I never looked inside that one. 65 sites that most have full hook-up and pull-through. A few cool tent sites with gas BBQs. Some cool looking cabins but I never looked inside one. I'm here on 8/24/2024 and RV park is sold out except 3 pull-through sites. All tent sites were full. I don't know about the cabins. Cool playground for kids and large mostly gravel dog run. Edit added: AT&T has 5G and three bars. KOA has wifi but slow slow slow I got 3MPS so instead of KOA wifi I used my iPhone Personal Hotspot that worked great. THE BAD(and reason for only 3 stars): All gravel roads and sites throughout the park. Very close together. Some sites have a very narrow strip of grass. Some of the picknick tables need to be re-painted. Unfortunately while eating breakfast you could be 2 feet away from the next RV dumping their sewer. P.U. The luxury sites don't have that problem. They are at the end of each row and only have a neighbor on the drivers side. I think well worth the extra 17 bucks. Not ADA friendly. Very hard for someone with a walker to get around because of gravel roads/sites. Someone with a wheel chair near impossible. Has a nice handicap shower in main office building. Only problem is that once I take my walker in with me it's very tight and no room to move around. Not EV car friendly. There is a$250 fine and eviction if you plug in your car. The person at the front desk told me the$250 fine and eviction is because EVs overload the outdated system and cause a fire. This KOA is an older one and was wired before EVs. Each individual site has its own 30 amp and 50 amp circuit breaker. Some trees but few and far between. No pool or hot tub. Final thoughts: Make reservations well in advance if you can. This KOA is the best game in town and is mostly sold out in summer. I think(sorry I don't know for sure) there is only one other RV park in town and from what I can tell, it is a much older one. I would proceed with caution before I booked it. Good traveling. See you on the road.

We were looking for an easy dispersed site to stay at while visiting a friend in Bozeman. This was an easy option for us with a 20ft camper. We stayed at the first pull off a few minutes off the main road. This site was easily accessible, right off the main road, close to town and close to some hikes.

This place seemed promising at first. It was hard to find a decent spot at night due to only using headlights of my van. Most of the road is extremely rugged/uneven/full of large holes. The only place I was able to stay for the night was the road leading up to the locked gate. This is about the only nice spot. Other than that this place is • quiet w/occasional traffic along the high way (right next to reservoir) • very few people here, but far enough away from me • no fee required • provides OK view to the mountains • great when you bring along a pet • you will need to be fully prepared for primitive camping

Our goal is to leave an unbiased review for future campers. First, don’t check in until 2:00 PM. The billeting office is closed for lunch and doesn’t get back until 2:00. As you don’t have a site number and you’ll need a key for the utilities, it will not do you any good to arrive early. Using our RV GPS, we headed off I-90 onto US-12 into Helena. At West Helena we turned on Williams St., which brought us to the VA Medical Center, then less than a 1/4 mile further to the South Gate. The gate is locked. When we called 406-324-3970(main gate) prior to our arrival, we were told to park in front of the gate and call the number on the post to have security come and let us in. The private security guard checked our IDs, reservation confirmation email, and then called in our names and truck license plate number. We were then told to head to the three story building where the billeting office is located and park in front of the building near the stepped entrance. This is not a large base/post, so don’t worry about getting lost. A lot of reviews talked about going through the North Gate, but as of this writing, they are using the South Gate for arrivals and departures. The main gate barriers are too narrow for a large RV. The billeting office is on the first floor straight a few yards and to the right after you enter the building and also where the free laundry is located. The FamCamp campground (CG) was simple to find, and we went to pull through FHU site 7 with 50/30/20 AMP. Not all the sites in this small CG have 50 AMP. The pull through was easy enough to get into, but its narrow with 9” high cement curbs, which makes getting your sewer up and over a bit of a challenge. They placed a brick thing at each site to help level your sewer hose. Also, depending on how your stairs deploy, dealing with the curb can be a challenge. In our opinion, the cement curbs are a horrible design. This site’s gravel pad was not level, so we had to use our leveler blocks. Water pressure was good at about 50 psi. There’s no CG Wifi, but we had our Starlink, plus we got a 4 bar Verizon signal. There are 12 sites here with row 1-7 being FHUs with 50/30/20 AMP and the back row 8-12 are 30/20 AMP. The sites are close to each other. We had a large class A in the adjacent site and its slideout came to our large cement picnic table. There’s a small restroom building but no showers. There are 6 RV or Tent sites where you could dry camp. There’s no obvious water spigot, but there are grass watering spigots. We saw reviews about a camp host, but we did not notice one. We departed at 10:50 AM and billeting called wondering if we had departed. If you don't turn in your key by 11:00 AM, you are charged an extra day. We were not unsatisfied with our stay, especially the good service and free laundry. But for a three day stay, due to their check in/out procedures, and site challenges, we’ll pass on this CG in the future.

This is a typical KOA.  First the good:

Friendly helpful staff until their gone at closing time.  Little mini store with a few essentials.  

Clean bathrooms and showers and clean laundry room with several washers/dryers.  $2.00 per load to wash.  Can't remember how much to dry.  Very cool pinball machine that costs 25 cents per game.  Fun fun fun!  Another bathroom/shower in middle of park but I never looked inside that one.

65 sites that most have full hook-up and pull-through.  A few cool tent sites with gas BBQs.  Some cool looking cabins but I never looked inside one.  I'm here on 8/24/2024 and RV park is sold out except 3 pull-through sites.  All tent sites were full.  I don't know about the cabins.

Cool playground for kids and large mostly gravel dog run.

Edit added:  AT&T has 5G and three bars.  KOA has wifi but slow slow slow I got 3MPS so instead of KOA wifi I used my iPhone Personal Hotspot that worked great.

THE BAD (and reason for only 3 stars):

All gravel roads and sites throughout the park.  Very close together.  Some sites have a very narrow strip of grass.  Some of the picknick tables need to be re-painted.  Unfortunately while eating breakfast you could be 2 feet away from the next RV dumping their sewer.  P.U.  The luxury sites don't have that problem.  They are at the end of each row and only have a neighbor on the drivers side.  I think well worth the extra 17 bucks.

Not ADA friendly.  Very hard for someone with a walker to get around because of gravel roads/sites.  Someone with a wheel chair near impossible.  Has a nice handicap shower in main office building.  Only problem is that once I take my walker in with me it's very tight and no room to move around.

Not EV car friendly.  There is a $250 fine and eviction if you plug in your car.  The person at the front desk told me the $250 fine and eviction is because EVs overload the outdated system and cause a fire.  This KOA is an older one and was wired before EVs.    Each individual site has its own 30 amp and 50 amp circuit breaker.

Some trees but few and far between.  No pool or hot tub.

Final thoughts:  Make reservations well in advance if you can.  This KOA is the best game in town and is mostly sold out in summer.   I think (sorry I don't know for sure) there is only one other RV park in town and from what I can tell, it is a much older one. I would proceed with caution before I booked it.  Good traveling.  See you on the road.

I felt so secluded here on a Sunday night. Beautiful area. Appreciated the reviews on here to find a good free place to spend the night.

Stayed here twice in early August about a week apart. Any car should be able to get down the road to the campsites. A bit buggy but free. Pit toilet available.

Was able to snag a primitive spot for one night. This campground isnt too far off I90 near 3 Forks, MT. No cell service (ATT) at the campground but 5g at the caverns. Hosts were super friendly and nice. I was in A7 which had a nice shade tree. Did not use the facilities so can’t speak to that. They had a guest speaker that night share about the bat population in MT. Very interesting!! Be sure to unhook and get to the caverns early in the morning to get a reservation to tour. We did the Paradise tour as my son is in a wheelchair. The classic tour looked super cool though!

Not to mention the single-lane cobblestone road, I have a truck and was bouncing up and down the whole way! I didn't find one area big enough to set up camp. I definitely would NOT recommend this spot

This is an amazing camp spot that is almost almost to the top of the trail to fairy Lake campground. There’s an established firing, and there’s room for multiple vehicles.

This was an ok stay outside of Bozeman. The coordinates took me to a spot which was occupied but looked like the only spot on that stretch of road. It began to get extremely rutted and I didn’t want to push any farther after that spot. I camped in what looked to be a dispersed campsite that they closed off

A bit confusing with all the no trespassing and no parking on/off the road signs. Felt more comfortable once we saw another van parked, and drove past the coordinate location a few minutes to use a tiny widened part of the road. No services.

Gorgeous campsite only 20ish min from the outskirts of Bozeman. Stopped in for 1 night passing through on a bigger road trip and couldn’t be luckier with this location. Fire rings at all campsites. Very quite road. Level ground for car camping. Would 100% come back just for this gem.