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📖 578 free campsites, verified
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Every site was read off a document the agency published, and the entry prints what that document says. Here is a real one, from the Eldorado National Forest:
CA-USFS-0141 Upper Hell Hole Campground
39.081898, -120.357878, 4,640 ft
Stay limit: 10 days per calendar year per ranger district in undeveloped locations, 14 in a developed campground (order 03-25-08)
Access: 3, all wheel drive and clearance
Managed by: Georgetown Ranger District, (530) 333-4312
The order number is printed so you can read it yourself. The phone number is printed so you can call that office and tell us we got it wrong. There are 249 of those numbers in the book.
441 pages, one PDF, in your hands the moment your payment goes through.
578 free campsites with coordinates in decimal degrees you paste straight into a phone, plus 155 low cost sites for the states where free ground is thin.
48 state chapters, the highway corridors run end to end, the free ground nearest each national park, and four appendices: the regulations, the stay limits, the office directory, and how to check any entry yourself.
It is a file, so it opens with the radio off, which is exactly where you will need it. Buyers of this edition get next year's at no charge.
Because public does not mean gathered.
Six hundred offices publish their own rules, on their own pages, with their own dates and their own exceptions, and none of them talk to each other.
What you are buying is those documents read one at a time, the 249 calls placed to the offices that wrote them, and a date printed beside every answer. You pay once.
The apps that will not tell you where their data came from want $29.99 to $99.99 a year, every year, forever.
Download it, read all 441 pages, and check ten entries against the phone numbers we printed. If it does not hold up, email us inside 30 days and we refund you.
There is no form to fill and nobody to argue with. One payment, no renewal, nothing to cancel later.
579 free sites across the 48 contiguous states, each one checked against the agency that controls the ground. 441 pages, in your hands the moment you pay.
Why the first edition is the cheap one
Every round of calls adds sites and adds pages. The second edition will be a bigger book and it will cost more. $47 is the first edition price, and buying now is the only way to pay it.
Three parts and four appendices, delivered as one PDF the moment you order.
579 sites, each with a source on it
Every entry names the agency that controls the ground and the date we checked with them. If a site closed, it stays in and is marked closed, not quietly deleted.
579 sites · 48 states
249 office numbers, printed
Not a switchboard, and not "call your local ranger district". The direct line for the office that can tell you the site is closed, beside the coordinates.
249 offices
A grade from 1 to 4 for your rig
Surface, turnaround, clearance. What a 35-foot fifth wheel can actually reach, decided before you commit to eleven miles of gravel with nowhere to turn.
Graded 1 to 4, every site
Stay limits by district, not in general
Everyone quotes 14 days. The written orders say otherwise in dozens of districts, with move-on distances attached. This prints the one that applies where you are parked.
District by district
Corridors, with the miles between them
Chains of sites you can run end to end, so a week of free nights is a route you can drive instead of a lottery you play every afternoon at five.
Part III
The free ground outside the park gates
Where the national park charges and is booked out to next spring, the land on the other side of the boundary often costs nothing. Printed with the boundary.
Part III
Part I explains what "verified" means here, and what it does not. Read those pages first, then hold the other 440 to that standard. Appendices A to D carry the regulations, the stay limits, the office directory, and the instructions for checking us.
Where the free ground actually is
free sites in California, the deepest chapter in the book
in Montana, where the stay limits vary the most
in Colorado, then Arizona 56 and Idaho 54
All 48 contiguous states have a chapter, including the ones where the honest answer is no. Those chapters are short, and they say so on the first line.
No brand names here, because the problem is not one product. It is the whole category.
| Free Camping USA | An app or a guidebook | |
|---|---|---|
| Source named on the entry | Yes, with a date | No |
| Office phone on the entry | 249 direct numbers | "Call your district" |
| Stay limit for that district | Printed per district | General rule only |
| Access grade for a big rig | 1 to 4 | Comments, if any |
| Closed sites | Kept and marked | Silently removed |
| Works with no signal | It is a file | Offline mode, sometimes |
| What you pay | $47, once | Every year |
Where the apps win: raw count. They list tens of thousands of pins. This lists 579 and names who to call about each one.
312 early readers, most of them full timers who went and called an office before they believed the page.
Swipe →
"I called one. Somebody picked up."
The phone numbers are real
I did not believe it, so I picked an entry at random and called the office printed under it. A person answered and confirmed the stay limit on the page. That was the moment I trusted the other 440.
"I stopped guessing at the gate"
Worth it for the access grades alone
We run a 34-foot fifth wheel. Half the free spots I had saved on apps we physically could not get into, and you find out at the end of eleven miles of gravel. The 1 to 4 grade tells you before you turn off the highway.
"Yes it is public info. Try assembling it."
Two winters of research, replaced
I had been building my own spreadsheet off agency sites for two years. This has more entries, every one is dated, and it names the office that told them. I deleted the spreadsheet the same week.
"The 14-day rule is not the 14-day rule"
Kept us legal in Montana
Turns out our district had a 16-day limit with a move-on distance attached. No app we have ever used says that. It was printed on the page, with the office number under it, and we called to be sure.
"No signal, no problem"
A file beats an app in the desert
Downloaded it before we left. Two weeks in eastern Oregon with one bar total, and every coordinate and every number was still sitting on my phone. That is the whole argument for a PDF.
"The 'no' chapters are the useful ones"
It tells you where not to bother
Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut. It just says no and explains why, in half a page. That honesty is the reason I believe the California chapter, which is the one I actually needed.
"Honest four stars"
I wanted photos of the sites
Every number I have checked has been right, and I have checked six. I took off a star because there are no site photos, so you arrive blind on the scenery. The access grade covers the part that actually matters.
Everything worth knowing before you download the first edition.
One PDF, 441 pages, downloaded the moment your payment goes through. Three parts and four appendices: the method, 48 state chapters, the corridors and the ground outside the park gates, then the regulations, the stay limits, the office directory and the instructions for checking our work.
No. It is a PDF. There is no printed edition of this title and no shipping to wait for. You can print the state chapters you need at home, and plenty of readers do.
Because public does not mean gathered. The land is public and so are the rules, but they sit in signed orders across hundreds of separate districts, each with its own exceptions, and none of them talk to each other.
You are buying the 249 calls you do not have to make.
Not for later editions. Every round of calls adds sites and adds pages, and the next edition will be a bigger book at a higher price. $47 is the first edition price, and this is the only edition selling at it.
All 48 contiguous states have a chapter, but the free ground concentrates: California 115 sites, Montana 84, Colorado 71, Arizona 56, Idaho 54, and down from there. Where a state has almost nothing, the chapter says so on the first line instead of padding itself out.
Every entry carries the date we checked it and the office we checked it with. Ground conditions change, so some of it will go stale, and we would rather you catch it than not.
Call the office printed under the entry, then tell us. Corrections are dated and go into the next edition.
It is a file on your phone, so yes. Coordinates, office numbers, access grades and stay limits are all readable with the radio off. That is the point of a PDF instead of an app.
No, and Part I is where we prove it. Every site names the agency that controls the ground and the date of the check, and 249 of those offices have their direct number printed beside the coordinates. A generated book cannot hand you a phone number that answers.
Thirty days, money back, and you will have read all 441 pages by then. Email us inside the window and we refund you. There is no version of this where you argue with a form.
