Chuck Swan State Forest - Primitive Camping Site (north)

public land records

Thin — A single weak source put this here. Treat the location itself as unconfirmed, not just the details.

One of two primitive camping sites on the 24,705-acre Chuck Swan State Forest, Union County, on the peninsula between Norris Lake and the Powell River. The Division of Forestry's own page describes them: "Recreation facilities include primitive camping sites, picnic areas and a parking area in the northeastern portion of the forest near the fire tower." This is ONE OF THE FEW TENNESSEE FREE CAMPING OPTIONS THAT IS NOT HUNTER-RESTRICTED - TDF presents it as a recreation facility, and the sibling Chickasaw State Forest page states the general rule "General access is free however, license fees may apply." COORDINATE IS DERIVED, NOT PUBLISHED - hence confidence=low: TDF publishes no lat/lon for these sites. The Chuck Swan Recreation Map PDF (https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/agriculture/archive/documents/forestry/stateforests/chuck-swan/ChuckSwanSF-Recreation-Map.pdf, updated May 2026, read 2026-08-16) is a true GeoPDF: its /VP viewport carries /GPTS corner coordinates in NAD83 UTM 16N. I read the page-space position of each "Camping Sites (Primitive)" marker glyph out of the PDF content stream and bilinearly interpolated against those corners. This is the northern of the two (page x=631.832 y=441.105). As a check, the result was point-in-polygon tested against TDF's own boundary service and returned StateForestName="Chuck Swan State Forest", Acres=24705, matching the acreage TDF prints on the forest page. Expect tens of metres of error, not hundreds - but a reviewer should confirm on the ground or against a fresher agency map before publishing. Nearest mapped parking area by the same method: 36.370125, -83.890597. TDF office: 3476 Sharps Chapel Road, Sharps Chapel, TN 37866, (865) 722-2088. Sources: https://www.tn.gov/agriculture/forests/state-forests/chuck-swan.html | https://www.tn.gov/twra/wildlife-management-areas/east-tennessee-r4/chuck-swan-wma.html (both read 2026-08-16). FEE BASIS: TWRA's own licence price list (https://www.tn.gov/twra/license-sales.html, read 2026-08-16) lists no camping fee for any Tennessee WMA or state forest. The only camping line on the whole price list sits under the heading "Land Between the Lakes" - "Annual Hunt/Camp Permit (Age 18 and over) ... $50.00" - which is the federal LBL permit, not a state charge. Rule 1660-01-14-.13 sets WMA camping rules and prescribes no fee. This is an absence-of-fee finding, not a published "free" statement. == NIGHTSHIFT RE-VERIFIED 2026-08-20 (fire 1180, leftover backlog pass 6: TX/TN/MO/SC/VT) == HOLDS UP, AND THE DERIVED COORDINATE WAS RE-DERIVED FROM SCRATCH THIS FIRE AND REPRODUCED EXACTLY. Sources re-read 2026-08-20: https://www.tn.gov/agriculture/forests/state-forests/chuck-swan.html still gives "Size: 24,705 acres" and still says, verbatim, "Recreation facilities include primitive camping sites, picnic areas and a parking area in the northeastern portion of the forest near the fire tower." https://www.tn.gov/twra/wildlife-management-areas/east-tennessee-r4/chuck-swan-wma.html still says "General access is free however, license fees may apply." and states NO camping restriction - unlike every TWRA WMA page in this batch, it does not limit camping to hunters. That is why these two rows survive where the Bridgestone and Yanahli rows did not. COORDINATE RE-DERIVATION (this is the part the previous fire asked a reviewer to check): I re-downloaded the GeoPDF https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/agriculture/archive/documents/forestry/stateforests/chuck-swan/ChuckSwanSF-Recreation-Map.pdf (3.9 MB, read 2026-08-20), decompressed the page content stream with pikepdf, and located the optional-content group the map itself names "Camping Sites (Primitive)" (/OC6). That group contains exactly TWO marker glyph placements and no others, at page-space text matrices (631.83164, 441.10494) and (631.59163, 417.10283). Those are the same two page positions the previous fire used, recovered independently. I then bilinearly interpolated them against the PDF's own georeference - viewport BBox [14.40072 549.11446 777.63894 15.54745] and /Measure /GPTS corners 36.26735/-84.08393, 36.40294/-84.07887, 36.39683/-83.83898, 36.26127/-83.84445 - taking the map as north-up, which the page geometry requires. Result: north marker 36.370555, -83.885899 and south marker 36.364458, -83.886217, i.e. the values already in these rows, reproduced to 0.1 m. The mapped parking area (/OC7) likewise reproduces to 36.370125, -83.890597. THE "IS IT ONE SITE DRAWN TWICE?" QUESTION IS ANSWERED: NO. There are two distinct glyph placements 679 m apart, drawn separately in the same layer. CAVEAT FOUND THIS FIRE: the recreation-map PDF's own internal metadata says "Creator: Esri ArcMap 10.8.0.12790, CreationDate: D:20200612155051-05" - so the RECREATION map dates from June 2020. The "most recently updated in May 2026" line on the TDF page describes the road-and-trail maps, not this one. Treat the camping-site positions as 2020-vintage agency data. ALSO: the TWRA page says "The WMA is open year-round during daylight hours, please note hunting seasons" and "All Big Game Hunts are Quota Hunts only" and "Entering the WMA from Norris Lake during the deer and turkey hunts is prohibited." The daylight-hours line sits oddly next to TDF advertising primitive camping sites; TDF is the land manager and states the camping facility affirmatively, so I have taken TDF as governing, but a traveller should phone the TDF office at (865) 722-2088 before relying on a mid-hunt stay. DECISION: approved. This row is the NORTHERN of the two markers.

Read from the agency's own season / closure text in this record (data/conditions.py) and checked against the calendar. The words we read are printed under the verdict at the top of the page.

US DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center station locator, snapshot 2026-09-16. Straight-line miles to the nearest public, open, unrestricted station; restricted and planned units are shown but never counted.

On the agency's books. The land manager inventoried this site, so its existence is not in question — current conditions are. Nobody from here has camped it recently.