Dispersed camping
Dispersed camping in Colorado
Camping outside developed campgrounds is free on most national forest and BLM land — but every forest and field office writes its own rules for how long you can stay, how far from the water, and which roads you can camp along. Here they are for 8 national forests and 6 BLM field offices in Colorado, each read from that office's own orders and pages.
How long you can stay
Every forest and field office listed here caps a stay at 14 days — but each one counts those days its own way. Some count per location, some across the whole forest, some inside a radius, and the window the days sit in differs too. The counting rule is spelled out on each page below.
| Forest / office | Stay limit | Where you can camp |
|---|---|---|
| Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests & Pawnee National Grassland | 14 days in any 30 | Designated sites in some areas |
| BLM Colorado River Valley Field Office | 14 days in any 30 | Designated sites in some areas |
| BLM Grand Junction Field Office | 14 days in any 30 | Designated sites in some areas |
| BLM Gunnison Field Office | 14 days in any 30 | Designated sites in some areas |
| BLM Kremmling Field Office | 14 days in any 30 | Designated sites in some areas |
| BLM Royal Gorge Field Office | 14 days in any 30 | Allowed unless posted |
| BLM Tres Rios Field Office | 14 days in any 30 | Designated sites in some areas |
| Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests | 14 days | Designated sites in some areas |
| Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests & Thunder Basin National Grassland also in Wyoming | 14 days in any 30 | Allowed unless posted |
| Pike-San Isabel National Forests & Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands | 14 days in any 30 | Designated sites in some areas |
| Rio Grande National Forest | 14 days in any 30 | Allowed unless posted |
| San Juan National Forest | 14 days | Designated sites in some areas |
| White River National Forest | 14 days in any 30 | Designated sites in some areas |
| Manti-La Sal National Forest also in Utah | 14 days in any 28 | Allowed unless posted |
"Designated sites in some areas" means camping is generally allowed but certain corridors and high-use areas are limited to marked sites — each page names the orders that draw those lines. We don't list campsites or coordinates anywhere on this site: the rules are ours to summarize, the spot is yours to find.
Fires are a separate rule
None of the pages above says you can have a campfire — that answer changes with the weather. For 7 of the 14 pages above, the current fire order stage shows live on the camping page itself; every page says where to read the current order before you light anything, and the forests we watch have their stage on one list.
The drive out is a different rule again — county burn bans cover the private land along the way. Check the Colorado burn ban page, county by county, and what stage 1 and stage 2 mean once you cross onto forest land.
Rules change by forest order and posted signage — confirm with the ranger district or field office before you go. Every page above names the office and, where published, the phone number.