RV Parks & Campgrounds in Grainger County, TN: 2023 Rules

After a contested 2023 vote sent an earlier draft back for revision, Grainger County adopted its RV park and campground regulations under Resolution No. 10.9.23A, dated October 9, 2023. If you're buying land to run a campground, place a long-term RV, or live near one, here's what the adopted rule actually requires.

This page covers what's specific to Grainger County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

From a contested vote to an adopted ordinance

Grainger County's RV park and campground regulations went through a genuinely bumpy path to adoption. A 2023 Planning Commission-drafted proposal -- covering licensing, a park definition excluding permanent residences, and daily penalties -- ran into a procedural dispute over whether the vote required a supermajority, and after RV park owners raised objections, the County Commission sent it back to be reworked jointly with the Building Committee and the park owners themselves (see the Grainger County hub for that earlier chapter, sourced from graingertoday.com's contemporaneous coverage).

That revision process concluded with a final, adopted version: Resolution No. 10.9.23A, posted directly on the county's own website and dated October 9, 2023, with the file itself labeled as the resolution's "final" text. That resolves what had been an open question -- the county did ultimately adopt RV park and campground regulations, roughly two months after the contested initial vote.

What the adopted resolution actually requires

The adopted rule sets a real, two-track permit structure. Operating an RV park requires an annual permit costing $200, renewed yearly. Separately, any long-term recreational vehicle, motor home, travel trailer, camping trailer, or truck camper that rents or leases a specific RV site or pad within a park for longer than 30 days requires its own individual permit -- priced not as a flat fee but as 65 percent of the county's tax rate per $1,000 of value, tying the cost of a long-term placement to the same kind of valuation-based calculation used for property tax. That's a meaningfully different cost structure than a flat per-unit fee, and it's worth running the actual math against a specific unit's value before budgeting a long-term-stay operation.

On siting, the resolution requires a minimum of five acres for a new RV campground, sited on a well-drained tract and specifically located outside flood-plain areas -- a real constraint that rules out smaller parcels and anything in a mapped floodplain regardless of acreage. Operationally, the resolution requires a 24-hour contact phone number to be available for all campground occupants, and requires bath and shower facilities to be provided wherever primitive or tent camping is permitted alongside RV sites.

What to verify before you buy or build

Before buying Grainger County land with an RV park, campground, or long-term-camper plan in mind, get the full current resolution text and any fee-schedule updates directly from the Grainger County Planning Commission or the Grainger County Clerk, and confirm whether the tract you're evaluating actually clears the five-acre, well-drained, out-of-floodplain siting bar before assuming it qualifies. If you're buying near an existing RV park rather than operating one, the resolution's 24-hour-contact and bath/shower-facility requirements are a reasonable baseline for what oversight should already exist next door -- worth confirming is actually being followed if you have specific concerns about a nearby operation.

Separately, confirm whether the county has amended this resolution since October 2023 -- an ordinance that went through one contested revision already is a reasonable candidate for further tweaks as the county gets more experience enforcing it, and this page should be treated as describing the 2023-adopted baseline rather than a guarantee that nothing has changed since.

RV Parks & Campgrounds in Grainger County, Tennessee

From a contested vote to an adopted ordinance

What the adopted resolution actually requires

What to verify before you buy or build

Ready to talk to someone who knows land?