Panther Flat Campground

Lovely campsite, quiet, secluded, clean. Camp host most helpful!

Clean flush bathrooms showers availability good, beautiful area. The road noise tapered off at night and the river was a nice ambient sound.

Nice clean private sites.

This campground has a big issue with break ins and theft. More than any campsites I have been to. Three or more large scale thefts in the two days that was there. Apparently this is an issue that is not bieng addressed. Something needs to be done. The sheriff never came to investigate or take a report. I like the campground. Its just not a safe place.

We were robbed at our campsite. Pretty sure the camp host was was involved. He came to our site and basically implemented himself with several odd statements about the theft including naming specific items that were stolen and very clearly explaining how he was away from the campground during the theft. I would like to know if he ever leaves so I could return.
Otherwise the campground is great.

Generator was stolen while we slept. Noisy neighbors.

Name tag on site was great, love that feature, very professional!

Love the location, easy walking access to Smith River. Busy campground, little privacy, but we had friendly neighbors. Fire pit had a grill grate, adjustable height. Lots of twigs around to help start fire. Bathrooms were stocked and fairly clean.

This is our second stay at Panther Flat and we had a disappointing experience this time around (July 2023). We arrived at the campground on a Wednesday night around 8pm to find our reserved site was occupied by a large group with 3+ cars and tents parked at our site. The campers looked puzzled as we pulled up to double check that the "reserved" sign that did in fact have our name and dates of stay listed. They told us that a ranger came by and told them they could occupy the space, as no one had it reserved until a couple days later. They claimed the sign must have been updated while they were not paying attention. It was getting late so we made our way over to the on-site hosts with one of the people occupying our reserved site, who mentioned to the hosts that they were just starting dinner and would need at least 2 hours to move their belongings from our site. The hosts were actually off duty (their off days are Tues/Weds) but without cell service, there wasn't much else we could do. The hosts didn't seem to have a proper solution for our issue, and simply offered for us to park down in the day use area to spend the night as they didn't want to move the folks that took over our reserved site. They claimed we would be refunded for our one night reservation and promised us a better solution in the morning.

An apologetic ranger visited us in the morning and moved us to a random site near the bathrooms for our next night. The refund obviously never came, nor did the hosts check in on us the next day. To have spent the time researching the best site for our setup (6 months in advance), pay extra online reservation fees, and then get kicked out of our reserved site to an area with no showers and pit toilets was disappointing to say the least. The camp hosts and rangers really need to be more vigilant and they need a better system to ensure reserved sites are occupied by the correct individuals.

TLDR; your reservation means nothing, so have a backup plan!

It was quiet, clean, the tent sites were flat and private, the bathrooms were clean.