Boulder County Fairgrounds Campground

This is my 2nd time staying in Boulder County Fairgrounds. The first was brief due to a very rude woman operating the campgrounds back in 2012. This time around (in 2015) the workforce was much more polite and welcoming.

There are a variety of sites, from large pull-thru's capable of handling the 40+ foot rigs to back-in sites of varying sizes for us van-guys or smaller trailers. All have electric, but only some have water. Some are shaded, some are not. Some have easy access to picnic tables, others do not. The sites are very basic, some being a tight squeeze, but you should be able to find one to your liking, just take your time to look around.

There is a single dump station shared among all campers, and though there are specified hours of operation I did not see the hosts closing/locking the gates each day. In theory you could use the dump station after hours, but consider that some of the camp sites are directly beside the dump station. There is a cost of $5 for non-campers to use the dump.

Being within the fairgrounds property you have easy access to Home Depot, Super Target, King Soopers, PetSmart, and numerous places to eat, all within walking distance. You also have Cattail ponds and the trail systems around them. Great for morning or evening hikes and with any luck you will see the Eagles or Osprey nesting around the ponds.

Unfortunately, Longmont has a busy railway that passes right through town and you will hear the trains all day and night. They pass over numerous busy traffic intersections and the conductors seem to take pride in how long they press the loud-button. Even though the tracks may be a half-mile away, if you are sensitive to those horns you may not like it here. Otherwise most people may not even notice the noise once asleep.

It had snowed several times by early November the year I stayed here, way back in the 2009. I sipped whisky from inside of my VW Bus, hoping to stay warm but not that kind of warm where you're actually freezing and die in the night. I don't believe that I did, but perhaps I am just dreaming all of this life since in a never ending single moment before I am accepted into whatever hell awaits whisky drinkers.

I imagined the spinning lights of carousels and the Zipper, funnel cakes or elephant ears or whatever they're called here wafting through the air and the promise of some sort of farming equipment showdown in the fairgrounds just beyond.

By winter, however, no one was left. Not even an attendant at the park itself. I never had a neighbor, and no one ever came to collect the money I put in the metal box every day.

Therefor, what would have been a very small space in a relatively small campground was my personal playground for awhile.

However, I eventually decided that free camping at the movie theatre's underground parking garage was a better location, if that tells you anything. I mean, they had movies. And underground cave temperatures.

We visited Longmont in August of 2016 and camped at the Boulder County Fairground.

This is not a scenic place to stay as it is just a parking lot within the county fairgrounds. Some of the spots are shaded, some are not, some have water & electric, some just electric, and some no hook-ups at all. The upside is that it is affordable ($20/night for an electric site) and is very conveniently located in downtown Longmont. We missed the Boulder County Fair by a few days so the campground wasn't crowded or noisy. There are decent bathrooms, showers, and a utility sink available.

Unless there's an event going on at the fairgrounds, there isn't that much to do at the actual campground itself. However, it's located nearby a number of restaurants, shops, a movie theater, and local breweries. (Skeye Brewing has a taproom one block from the campground that we highly recommend visiting.) There is also a summer farmers market that takes place on Saturdays at the north side of the fairgrounds, which is <10 minutes to walking distance from the campground.

We really enjoyed using this place as our basecamp while we biked around downtown Longmont and explored this city. I'd definitely recommend this campground if you want to visit the area affordably.

Horrible place! Quite a few here are long term and there are some pretty trashy sites. Your space is barely wide enough to put slides out without hitting your neighbor. Only 8 spaces are long, and they are hard to get because half are taken by people staying for a while. Sites are all gravel and pretty uneven. Quiet time is 9 to 6 but at 9:30 the party was still going on next to us with people outside and the door open. The campground host only works 10 am to 4 pm so there is nobody to call. They have restrooms and showers locked and they don't give you the combination. This is self service so you never see a live person. We were going to stay a few days, but no way!

The sign says there's a 14 day limit per year. It appears there are people staying longer but they were nice enough. It's $25 for electric and water and $20 for just electric or water and $15 for no hookups but they are almost all the same sites so I guess it's on the honor system? Everything in this area is like a $50 minimum so we were grateful for the opportunity to have somewhere that didn't totally break the bank and remind us of the cost of house living. The bathroom code was 6278 when we stayed here and the sign up is self serve at a very convenient machine that takes credit cards or cash. You have to check a ticket is not in your spot when you choose it. We accidentally choose an occupied spot and had to move. There's also a dump here for $5. Oh and almost all the spots are pull through and pretty close to level.

We stayed here in May 2015 for a couple of weeks to be close to family and friends. We loved the affordability of the place, but it's little more than a dirt parking lot with hookups (W/E). You can choose to dry camp, hook up to electric only or electric/water, each level up is an additional $5 (so $15, $20, $25) and you are limited to 14 days in a year. We can get by with just electric which is nice at $20/nt. They also have a dump station. It's close to Boulder and Longmont which is what we wanted, and the Longmont Saturday Farmer's Market is right opposite at the Fairgrounds, and definitely worth a visit. You register/pay for your site at a machine that takes your credit card. This place is nothing fancy but it's affordable, sites are tight and be warned, it can get a bit trashy... so there's a few things that don't excite us about staying here more than a few nights in the future.... 1) One night we heard a domestic going on in a nearby trailer and were about to call the police when they showed up... 2) when we arrived in late April 2015 Colorado was experiencing unseasonably heavy rain for weeks on end and the campground was literally a flooded mudpit which was both disgusting and miserable. If we hadn't been committed to helping a sick family member we would have packed up and left. 3) Beware if there's a dog show at the fairgrounds! One Friday we noticed all these trailers rolling in with dogs... not 1 or 2 but some had up to 10 dogs in their trailers for the weekend dog show... as dog lovers we thought that was kinda fun until one started barking which set them all off. We estimate there were 50-70 rigs each with 4-6 dogs... Do the math... listening to hundreds of dogs yapping and barking incessantly, we literally almost went insane and had to go out for the afternoon/evening to get away from it. But that's probably only a rarity on dog show weekends. It's definitely is not our favorite place to stay in CO, but it's cheap, and a decent location and as long as it isn't raining and there is no dog show in town! We would return, but probably not for more than a week and only during optimal conditions! It's the closest campground to Boulder, CO. If you prefer more of a campground/natural environment with nice paved sites and full hookups, head to St Vrain State Park instead, also in Longmont but closer to I25.

Complete lack of staffing. The campground is trashed by local vagrants taking advantage of no staff to remove them. Sheriff was there three times in the week we camped. Showers were filthy with snot and blood all over the walls and dirty clothes piles. That is if you can get in the bathroom/shower building because they change the code constantly and tell no one. Since no one is staffed, you can't get the new code either.

I won't even consider this place again

We wanted to camp somewhere within a reasonable distance of a couple of our favorite breweries and the fairground was reasonably priced, and with plenty of sites so we had no problem getting a site on a Friday in late June. No, it isn't very scenic, and it's quite dusty when cars go past or the wind blows hard, which it did one day we were there, but it served our purpose.
We were not given the code for the bathrooms, and didn't go back to the office to ask for it, so can't comment on them, since we knew we were planning to dump when we left and just used our own facilities.
The location was great, as the St. Vrain paved bike trail was easy to access and it was just a short walk to the Saturday farmer's market. Also, Oskar Blues and Left Hand Breweries are just a couple miles away, and Boulder is a quick 12 miles south.

The campground if they had every other site a site instead of right ontop of each other. I mean if I stuck my hand out my window I would touch my neighbors rig that's how close you are, there's like a railroad tie between ototh site. It's packing them in like rats. I didn't even go into the restroom to check them out I just couldn't. I drove 120 miles back home just to be back home instead of camping there it's really sad. It has nice trees there. There's like three sites that I could see that has an actual pad to it where you could sit on it and have friends over other than that you're packed in there like pack rats and it's really really sad.

This is a convenient, but cramped public fairgrounds campground. Most sites are pull-through, and there are restrooms with hot showers (if you can get the keycode). The sites have electric and water connections, but the water connections are turned off in the winter months. The restrooms are also locked in the winter months, so this may be best as a summer type destination.