Confirm access & rules
Ask the responsible office about camping permission, road access, stay limits, permits, and current closures.
BLM camping guidanceCALIFORNIA · EARLY ACCESS
Find your way
to the wide open.
A field guide to public-land boundaries that can help you start planning a dispersed-camping trip. Land ownership is not permission to camp.
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BOUNDARY DATA · USGS PAD-US 3.0
Use for broad planning only · Read data limitations
A BETTER TRIP STARTS HERE
Before you head out
Check fire restrictions
Restrictions can change quickly with weather. Check local rules and California campfire permit requirements.
CAL FIRE permits & safetyLeave it better
Use existing sites, stay on designated roads, pack out all waste, and keep a safe distance from water and wildlife.
Forest Service camping tipsKNOW WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING AT
About this map
The default source filters the Fee land records in the USGS Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) 3.0 for selected federal, state, and local public managers in California. It excludes private records and overlapping designation-only records. The live ArcGIS layer is hosted outside USGS and reproduces this older PAD-US release.
PAD-US is a national inventory assembled from agency and partner data, not a real-time closure or camping-permission feed. California's PAD-US 3.0 update included state, regional, local, and nonprofit data from CPAD; coverage and update dates vary by source. Its boundaries are generalized and may overlap or be incomplete.
Do not use this map to decide whether a specific campsite is legal or open. Contact the managing office and check current restrictions, access, fire rules, and conditions. A missing boundary does not prove land is private or unavailable.
Optional Forest Service recreation, road, trail, and MVUM overlays, BLM road datasets, and alternate imagery/topographic basemaps are reference layers only. Click a mapped USFS or BLM road to inspect its available route attributes, land record, coordinates, and distance to a named Census road. When the selected route matches connected Census road geometry, the popup gives a road-network distance; otherwise it says unavailable and keeps straight-line distance as a separate reference. Neither establishes camping permission or current road access/closures. Coverage and update timing vary. Verify with the responsible land manager.