I used to think finding free camping meant scrolling through sketchy forums at 2 a.m., hoping someone hadn’t lied about that “perfect spot” near Moab.
Turns out, the Bureau of Land Management—BLM, not to be confused with the acronym you see on protest signs—oversees roughly 245 million acres of public land, give or take a few million depending on who’s counting and whether they’re including Alaska. Most of it’s open for what they call “dispersed camping,” which is bureaucrat-speak for: park your van, pitch your tent, don’t be an idiot about it. The agency doesn’t exactly advertise this—there’s no slick campaign with Instagram influencers hashtagging #FreeCampingGoals—but the rules exist, buried in PDFs and regional office websites that look like they haven’t been updated since 2003. You can stay up to 14 days in most areas, then you’re supposed to move at least 25 miles away, though enforcement is, let’s say, inconsistent. I’ve seen the same Airstream parked outside Quartzsite for what seemed like months.
Here’s the thing: not all BLM land is created equal. Some parcels are closed to camping entirely—mining claims, wilderness study areas, that sort of thing—and figuring out which is which requires cross-referencing maps that may or may not agree with each other. The official BLM website has a “Find Public Lands” tool, but it’s clunky, prone to timing out, and occassionally tells you a campsite exists when it definately doesn’t.
Why Paper Maps Still Matter More Than Your Phone’s GPS
I guess it makes sense that we’d all assume our phones know everything.
Except when you’re 40 miles outside Ely, Nevada, and your signal’s been dead for an hour, suddenly that $12 Motor Vehicle Use Map from the BLM field office feels like the smartest purchase you’ve made all year. These maps—they’re not sexy, they’re printed on paper that feels like it’ll disintegrate if you breathe on it wrong—show which roads are open, which require high clearance, which are closed seasonally because some endangered tortoise is nesting nearby. Digital tools like FreeRoam or Campendium aggregate user reports, and they’re genuinely useful for narrowing down coordinates, but they rely on crowdsourced data, meaning someone’s “easy access” might involve a creek crossing your Subaru won’t survive. I’ve learned to trust the boring government maps more than the app with 4.8 stars.
The Unspoken Etiquette Nobody Warns You About Before Your First Trip
Wait—maybe this is obvious, but it wasn’t to me: just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all.
The Leave No Trace principles aren’t suggestions; they’re the social contract keeping these lands accessible. Pack out your trash, bury human waste at least 200 feet from water sources, don’t cut down live trees for firewood even if you’re cold and dramatic about it. Fires are often restricted during dry seasons—check with the local field office, not just the website, because updates lag—and some areas require a free campfire permit, which sounds like an oxymoron but isn’t. You’ll also want to avoid setting up camp directly on cryptobiotic soil, those crusty black patches in the desert that take decades to recover from a single footprint. Honestly, the biggest tension I’ve noticed is between long-term campers and weekend warriors: the former get territorial, the latter leave messes, and everyone suffers when someone calls in a complaint that triggers a crackdown.
Finding the Spots That Haven’t Been Instagrammed Into Oblivion Yet
There’s a paradox here.
The best BLM camping—remote, quiet, views that make you forget your credit card debt for a few hours—exists because it’s hard to find, but the moment someone posts about it, it stops being that way. I’m not saying don’t share your coordinates, but maybe consider the lag time between discovery and destruction. Apps help, sure, but so does calling the field office and asking a ranger where locals go, or driving forest service roads until you spot a flat clearing with a fire ring someone left behind. Some of my favorite spots came from wrong turns, which sounds insufferably whimsical but is actually just what happens when you trust a 1987 atlas. The point isn’t to gatekeep—it’s to recognize that these places are finite, that solitude is a resource too, and that sometimes the best adventure is the one you don’t photograph.
