By Ben Olson
Reader Staff
When it comes to locations to camp and recreate on Lake Pend Oreille, it’s hard to find better than Green Bay. The rocky beach east of Garfield Bay in Sagle has been a favorite for locals and visitors alike, with swimming, camping and views of the nearby mountains available. But, it’s this popularity that has led to changes.
Improvements will include a new road down to the campground, an enlarged parking area and a full-time hosted campground. There will be accessible paths leading to each of the 16 campsites, which now have pads, fire rings and picnic tables. The site will still be open for day use by the public, but campsites will have to be reserved via recreation.gov starting six months ahead of the camping date.
Improvements to Green Bay parking areas. Photo courtesy of USFS.
The project was made possible by funding from the Great American Outdoors Act — a five-year project approved by Congress that aims to make a substantial investment in the protection and maintenance of public lands until funding runs out in 2025.
The Green Bay project is mostly finished, but a delay on signage and vault toilets has pushed the opening to Memorial Day weekend 2025 or later.
Managed by the U.S. Forest Service, Green Bay has existed in a gray area for years as both a primitive and improved campground on the lakeshore. It’s also been known as a party spot for generations.
Josh Jurgensen, a recreational staff officer for the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, said USFS received funding for the project in 2022, with the contract awarded in July 2023.
Improvements to Green Bay campsites. Photo courtesy of USFS.
“But you know how it is in North Idaho,” Jurgensen told the Reader. “Contractors have been really, really busy.”
Jurgensen said the Forest Service wanted to finish the project this year, but a hot April and wet May — along with delayed installation of the vault toilets — have pushed the completion timeline until spring 2025.
Jurgensen told the Reader that a combination of the party atmosphere and the influx of out-of-area campers during the pandemic prompted the tipping point in committing to the improvements at Green Bay.
“This is known as a party crowd that comes down to Green Bay, so what we were trying to do was rate it more family friendly,” Jurgensen said. “One way to do that is to have a host on scene, who will handle the cleaning and education part; and, of course, will make notifications if we have unruly visitors.”
During the height of the rush of visitors during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jurgensen said that not everyone cleaned up after themselves, with some leaving piles of trash and damaging natural resources at the site.
“In April 2020, when Washington shut down all their stuff, it was bad at Green Bay,” Jurgensen said. “Since then, we’ve tried to get a design in place that would accommodate a new site that’s accessible for everything and thoughtful for resource, heritage and tribal concerns. We tried to address all of those.”
Jurgensen said the Forest Service is actively searching for a volunteer campground host to stay at Green Bay next summer. Those interested can contact the agency through its website, or call local offices.
In an interview with the Reader, Jurgensen said there were currently no plans to transform other campgrounds on the lake — aside from improvements scheduled for 2026-’27 at the Sam Owen campground, the second-largest USFS campground in the state.
Other campsites around the lake haven’t reached the threshold of use (and abuse) yet to facilitate funding and plans for improvements.
“For those more remote sites around the lake, we have no plans for the foreseeable future,” he said.
However, he added that it’s up to the public to continue to recreate responsibly and clean up after themselves when enjoying Idaho’s campgrounds.
“Even though a lot of the public does the right thing, that site [Green Bay] gets loved to death, sometimes by the party crowd if there isn’t a host on site,” Jurgensen said. “Not everyone will tear it up, but some will. … It’s a really great project and just like everything we do, people are going to love it or hate it, but it really does a good job of resource protection in the future and making it really accessible for the public.”
To reserve a campsite at Green Bay, sites are available for $15 through recreation.gov six months prior to the desired camping date.
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