Cottonwood Cove Park Campground

I am disappointed in this campsite. We arrived about 8:30 because of a late dinner in LaMars Iowa. A map online showing the exact location of campground entries and spaces would have been extremely helpful . Poor lighting made it difficult to find our reserved space in the dark or even find the road to turn into the “campground”.
A party of young men was going on at one of the pavilions with loud laughter and talking. Around 9:30, a huge boom from fireworks with several more followed. Truthfully, I did not feel as safe as I would have liked to but we remained. Since this is located in a residential neighborhood I am surprised that this activity was allowed. No campground hosts- in fact we were the only camper on site.
I was led to believe by other reviews (and I even asked when I was checking availability), that the sites backed up to the Missouri River. Not true - so if you read that, just know that you are actually in a park across the street from the river. 🙁☺️☺️
I don’t know the condition of the bathrooms as we are in a motorhome.

This space was electric and water only for $30. Not an issue but just be aware of it.

The reservation was made very easily early in the day through the website, I was charged $30 and picked a spot and received an email confirmation. We were traveling through the area and just needed an overnight spot. Upon arrival at 9PM we found the bathrooms to be locked, with no instructions, the after hours number on the entrance sign was answered by a message to leave a message to be called back within one business day. And the campground host was nowhere to be found. And it as the until we arrived that we saw a sign that said no tents- there’s no mention of this on the website and 2 camping review sites indicate that tents are allowed. It was late and there were portapotties by the playground so we decided to set up anyway- left early the next morning again without ever seeing the camp host
It’s too bad our experience was less than stellar because it was a nice quiet and clean site with water and electricity, in a quiet residential neighborhood
The city has not responded to my complaint email.

So many things for kids and teens to do (volleyball, playground, horseshoes, fishing on the river, etc.) . Right on the Missouri River. Clean, well groomed, and situated in a really nice neighborhood. Neighbors were very nice. We left our camper here for 6 days while we traveled areas west (it was too much for our vehicle going into the headwinds)Site manager was kind and helpful. Great stop off when traveling through the region.

Cottonwood Cove Park was the fifth campsite we rolled into in this tri-state area looking for a spot that we actually liked, and boy did we score! This is a little municipal park with only 12 sites, water/electric/cable TV for $22/night. Be aware that there is no dump station here. There's a small bath house that's presently closed for COVID-19 precautions.

Driveways and the road through the campground are crushed white gravel, but there are small concrete pads at each site for the rig and patio area. Large cottonwood trees tower throughout the campground. There are tiny campers and large fifth-wheels here, both. There's a campground host occupying one site, and you pay the host. Spacing between sites is very, very generous -- kudos to Dakota City for not cramming people into this place just to double the revenue.

The campground buts up right against a pretty natural stretch of the west bank of the Missouri River, with a boat launch and interpretive platform discussing Lewis & Clark's expedition that passed through here. The campground itself is tucked right into the middle of a neat, tidy residential neighborhood, such that it almost feels like you're part of the neighborhood.

It's been amazingly quiet during our stay. We've barely seen our neighbors, much less heard them even though the campground is mostly occupied. There are several rigs here that are long-term, presumably they're working at the massive Tyson Foods plant just up the road.

Cell service on Verizon is an impressive 4 bars, 42ms ping/65.6 Mbps down/24.8 Mbps up/3ms jitter.

We'd stay here again in a heartbeat.