William Kent Campground

Dogs are not allowed on the beach here. The Forest Service names William Kent outright, alongside Nevada, Pope, Baldwin, Meeks Bay and Zephyr Cove, on its list of designated swim beaches closed to pets. That beach is the day-use area directly across Highway 89 from the campsites. So the water is a two-minute walk away and closed to dogs.

The campground itself takes them. Two pets per site, on a six-foot leash, which is the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit’s baseline for every developed recreation site in the basin. The reservation page adds one line that changes the booking math: pets aren’t allowed inside the yurts. Those are the cabin-like units that sleep five or six on a wooden platform, and they’re dog-free bookings only. The Forest Service page closes its pet section with “Pet rules strictly enforced.”

More than 80 sites sit under tall pine, cedar and fir on flat ground about two miles south of Tahoe City. Recreation.gov is unusually blunt about the setting: “situated in a residential area, alongside a busy highway.” Highway 89 runs the length of the eastern edge, and the sites closest to it hear it. Evergreen shrubs and small grade changes screen sites from each other. Flush toilets, drinking water, bear-proof lockers at every site, no showers. California Land Management runs the place under a special use permit from the Forest Service.

The paved West Shore bike trail begins near the campground and allows leashed dogs, running north toward town and the 64-Acres trailhead roughly two and a half miles up. Sunnyside is about a mile north on West Lake Boulevard. Kaspian Campground is two miles the other way, same agency, same two-pet limit, same beach ban.

Nightly rates on the Forest Service page run $42 for a single site and $116 for a yurt, with a $2 holiday surcharge and $5 per extra vehicle collected at the campground. No pet fee appears on either official page.