What is Schoolhouse Campground?
Schoolhouse sits at the quiet end of Roosevelt Lake, on a point where the Salt River comes in from the Salt River Canyon, about 11 miles south of the dam. The campground is a single loop, the Mesquite Loop, with 40 sites under steel ramadas, each with a table and a fire ring with a grill. Most of the pads are pull-through, which is why trailer campers like it, and a handful are fully accessible with paved parking and stand-up grills. A paved boat launch with a courtesy dock sits below the loop, at 2,100 feet, with the Sierra Ancha across the water.
It is also, right now, closed. The Forest Service has shut the campground and the ramp because the lake has fallen below the 2,110-foot elevation the launch needs, and it has not said when either will reopen. Roosevelt has spent most of the last two decades below full, and Schoolhouse, at the shallow upstream end, is the first developed site to lose its water and the last to get it back. When the lake is up, this is the cheapest and least crowded developed camp on the lake, with the best birding, and it is worth watching for.
What you get, in a good year, is a $20 ramada site with a ramp and a trailer-friendly pad on the end of the lake nobody drives to. What you do not get is drinking water, showers, a store, or any certainty: the lake decides whether the campground exists this season, and in October 2026 the answer is no. Windy Hill, 10 miles back toward the dam, is the fallback with water, showers and 147 sites.
How to camp at Schoolhouse right
Check the closure first. Check the Forest Service page or call the Tonto Basin Ranger District before you go. As of October 2026 the campground and ramp are closed for low water, and the Forest Service points boaters to the Windy Hill launch instead. Watch the Roosevelt Lake elevation as well as the closure notice; the two move together, and the ramp needs 2,110 feet.
Pay and reserve like this. When open, $20 a night for a single site and $40 for a double, paid at a card-only machine, with Senior and Access passes taking half off a single. Odd-numbered sites are reservable on recreation.gov and even-numbered sites are first come, first served. The Forest Service page states two different reservation seasons, so trust what recreation.gov shows when you book. The boat launch needs a Tonto Pass or the fee-machine pass if you are not camping.
Get there. Take Shea Boulevard to SR 87 north about 60 miles, then SR 188 southeast past the dam and the SR 88 junction. Roughly 8 miles past the SR 88 junction, turn right onto Forest Road 447 and follow it 4 miles to the campground. Alternatively, take US 60 to Globe and SR 188 north 20 miles to FR 447. Either way it is about two hours and twenty minutes from Old Town, and the FR 447 approach is a graded road an ordinary car handles when dry. Fill water jugs at the Roosevelt Lake Visitor Center at milepost 242.8 on the way in.
Pick the season. Year round in principle, October through April in practice. Summer highs over 100 degrees are routine on the lake, and the Forest Service notes RV air conditioners often cannot keep up. Winter weekdays are empty.
Water. None. Vault toilets only. Fill up at the Roosevelt Lake Visitor Center on SR 188 and bring everything you will drink.
Camp by the rules. Check-in 2 p.m., check-out 11 a.m., quiet hours and no generators 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Trailers under 32 feet, no hookups; the pull-through sites take a 32-foot trailer without any backing. Dogs on leash.
Fish and watch birds. The campground sits where the Salt River enters the lake, which is why the birding is the best on the lake and why bass anglers like the inlet. When the water is up, the paved ramp and courtesy dock are below the loop.
Skip it if you need water, showers or a sure thing. Windy Hill has all three for $25, and Cholla on the north shore is the other developed option at the same price. For a free night with no facilities, the Forest Service’s Jones Water is on the Globe road.
The campground at the shallow end of the Valley’s first reservoir
The Tonto Basin was farmed long before the lake. From the 1200s into the 1400s Salado people irrigated the Salt River bottom here and built the cliff dwellings in the hillside above it, the ones Theodore Roosevelt protected as Tonto National Monument on December 19, 1907, while his dam was going up below them. The Salado left before the Spanish arrived, and the basin passed to the Tonto Apache and the Yavapai, who were removed to San Carlos in the 1870s so that ranchers, and then the Reclamation Service, could have the river.
Phoenix had wanted a dam on the Salt since its canals started failing in the droughts and floods of the 1890s. In 1889 a survey party led by Billy Breakenridge picked the Box Canyon site just below the Tonto Creek confluence, but nobody could pay for it. The Reclamation Act of 1902 could. Roosevelt Dam was one of the first five federal projects authorized under it; construction began in 1903, floods wrecked the works in 1905, and on March 18, 1911 Roosevelt himself dedicated a 280-foot masonry arch, the tallest of its kind in the world at the time, built for about $10 million. The reservoir behind it flooded the basin floor and its farms, and the Salt River Valley Water Users’ Association that had pledged its members’ land as collateral became the organization that is SRP today. The point where Schoolhouse sits, at the upstream end where the Salt River enters, was the last ground the water reached.
The lake was Arizona’s lake for most of the twentieth century: the Apache Trail was built to supply the dam and then carried tourists to it, the dam was named a National Historic Landmark in 1963, and the campgrounds along SR 188 went in as the road improved. Then the Bureau of Reclamation rebuilt it. Between 1989 and 1996 the dam was raised 77 feet to 357 feet and the old masonry was encased in concrete, a $430 million project that added flood storage above the conservation pool, moved SR 188 onto the new Roosevelt Lake Bridge, and so completely hid the 1911 dam that the Landmark designation was withdrawn on March 10, 1999. The reservoir’s conservation pool today covers about 21,500 acres when full.
Full is the problem. The lake filled briefly after the raising and again after the wet winter of 2005, and otherwise has spent most of this century drawn down, a local version of the whole Southwest’s drought arithmetic. Schoolhouse feels it first. The campground sits on the shallow Salt River arm, and its ramp is usable only above 2,110 feet; when the lake slides under that line, the Forest Service closes the launch and then the campground, as it has done in 2026 with no reopening date. The Forest Service’s own pages do not say where the name Schoolhouse Point comes from, and I could not pin it down; the dam-era town of Roosevelt had a school, but nothing I found ties it to this point.
What has not changed is the shape of the place: 40 ramadas on a mesquite flat where a wild river becomes a reservoir, with the best birding on the lake and the fewest people. When the water comes back, so will the campground.
Why it matters
Schoolhouse is where you can watch the Valley’s oldest bargain being renegotiated. Roosevelt Dam was the project that made Phoenix possible, and the lake it holds was raised, rebuilt and rebranded through the twentieth century as a sure thing; a campground that closes whenever the lake drops ten feet is a reminder that the sure thing depends on snow in the White Mountains. It also explains the lake’s geography: the deep end by the dam keeps its ramps and crowds, the shallow Salt River end gets the quiet and the birds and the closures. For a Scottsdale visitor the verdict is conditional. Check the level and the closure page; if Schoolhouse is open, it is the best $20 on the lake, and if it is not, Windy Hill is ten miles back and almost never full.