Highway K Campground and the Black River

I love the Black River as it is a clean river in Missouri, and have for a long time wanted to visit the Highway K bridge area of the Black River. People are always posting about it online. I see photos, however, of the place crowded with vehicles and that does not really appeal to me.

We camped at the Corp of Engineers campground with an original name (not!), Highway K Campground, Reynolds County, Missouri, on September 13, 2025. The campground and the river are considered part of the Clearwater Lake area and that is why it is managed by the Corp of Engineers. I do not see rivers managed by the COE often, but this river feeds the lake.

We visited the river first, but I am sharing our campsite image first. We camped the furthest from the river so we would have the quietest part of the campground, but if the weather were nicer, we would want one of the campsites close to the river so we could just get up in the morning and walk to the river.

I love the mini-mountains that shout out that I am in the Ozarks along the river. This is one of my favorite kind of scenes in Missouri.

We had not had rain in a long time and the river was very low.

We would come back here again since it is only about an hour and a half from home.

As the sun was setting, it made for a beautiful glow on the trees that this photo does not do justice.

This is a screen shot of where we were located on the phone map while at camp.

On the OnX app I noted how close were were to many other popular places, such as Sam A. Baker State Park and Johnson Shut-ins.

I did find on the OnX app that there were some easy overland roads that also went to more private parts of the Black River. We were tempted to go down them before we went home, but we saved that for another day.