Pickensville, Alabama COE Campground

This past Memorial Day Weekend, we stayed at the Army Corps of Engineer campground at Pickensville, AL.  This campground is in western Alabama, just a stone's throw from the Mississippi state line.  It is one of  seven campgrounds that the Army Corps of Engineers operate along the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway.


Knowing that campgrounds (especially those with large bodies of water) fill up quickly for Memorial Day weekend, we made reservations a couple of months in advance.  When we arrived on Friday afternoon, there was a sign at the entrance that indicated the campground was full.

Pickensville is a large campground with five camping loops.  All of the site have electric / water and some have sewer hookups.  The most popular sites along the waterway are first-come, first-serve only.  One of

the unique features about this campground (and I guess all along the Tennessee Tombigbee) is that it is a navigable waterway.  During our stay, we saw or heard several tugboats.  The working boats share the waterway with recreational boats of all shapes and sizes.

We camped at site #44, which was a very roomy spot with woods to our "living side".  This was one of the sites with water/elec/sewer priced at $20 per night.  



This campground is great for children.  There are several playground areas with basketball courts, volleyball courts, and playground equipment.

You can walk on a mostly paved trail that crosses through all of the campground loops.  There is also a lot of area to ride bikes.  Since we had full hookups, we did not use the bathhouses at the campground; however, each loop has a clean, well-lit bathhouse with a washer/dryer.


In the middle of the campground, there are many sites that back up to a body of water named "Clear Lake". The name is a bit misleading because the water is so dark that you can't see anything in it.  It is actually a cypress swamp.

On the other side of the big bridge that crosses the waterway, there is a day use area with picnic tables and a swim beach.  Since our campsite was not on the water, we decided to pack a lunch one afternoon and head out to the day use area to sit and watch the boats go by.  While this portion of the waterway does not get barge traffic, there were a number of recreational boats that zoomed by.  It made for a very nice and relaxing afternoon.

A few miles down the road, you can visit the Dam and Welcome Center.






The Welcome Center was fashioned after an antebellum plantation home.  It looked over the waterway and had a very nice courtyard area.  If you stay at this campground, I would highly recommend a visit to the dam, welcome center and day use area.

Even though we would have liked to be right next to the large waterway, we enjoyed our stay at Pickensville COE campground.