Ratcliff Lake Recreation Area Campground

Lucky to nab a first come/first served site on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The very friendly camp host helped us out with paying via the app on Recreation.gov so we didn’t have to trek back to the entrance.
Quiet and relaxing night; sites are well spaced but not private due to the high canopy of the tall pines. Access to hiking trail, fishing lake and paved drive for bikes. Individual rest room / sink / shower units were nice and well ventilated. A few barking dogs, but overall very relaxing.

Spacious forested campsite. Each site have ample space between them. The campground is mixed conifer/hardwood forest with no understory. One easy trail with a trailhead in the camp ground is a nice 3 mile stroll through the Piney Woods. This trail connects to the longer 20 mile one way 4C Trail. Ratclaff NRA is close to Mission Tejas State Park, Crockett, Lufkin and Nacogdoche.

Here in early December when the campground was almost empty.

Located less than three hours from Dallas in the piney woods of East Texas this park is great.

The sites are in decent shape with very good spacing. Restroom and shower facilities are in decent shape and kept clean. The road noise from the highway is not too bad and mostly during the day.

There is good hiking available and a lot of the camp sites are on the sawmill pond / lake.

The park was almost empty when we stayed there earlier this week. Hosts were very friendly and helpful. Sites are well spaced and well treed but not very level and the pads need some repair work. Tent sites are especially nice along the lake. The pay station is a distance from the campground but is a very nice walk (about 1 hr round trip - nice trails along the lake). We had an issue with an over voltage on the power supply which kept tripping our surgeguard. We would lose power for a period then it would right itself and come back on. The 4C Trail (follows tramway trails from the original sawmill) could be accessed from the park and was a great walk among the pine trees- easily followed. The OTA digital signal was spotty but sufficient for us to watch the Jeopardy GOAT tournament :). The remains of the sawmill were interesting to explore. Although the park is quite close to a busy road, the traffic noise was pretty minimal.