BurnDates

Dispersed camping · Arizona

Prescott National Forest dispersed camping rules

You can camp up to 14 days in any 30 on this forest, with some corridors limited to marked sites. The card below is the whole rule set — every line links the order or page it came from, and all of it was checked on .

14 days in any 30

Forest camping page: "Camping on Prescott National Forest is limited to 14-days in 30-day consecutive period which includes stays at dispersed sites." Within the Prescott Basin (the ~59,000 acres around the city of Prescott) the limit tightens to 7 days in a 30-day period at designated dispersed sites only (Order 09-233); the Basin brochure adds "campers may spend an additional 7 days in a developed campground or in dispersed areas outside the Prescott Basin." No numbered forest-wide stay-limit order was found - page wording used.

Where you can camp

Designated sites in some areas

Dispersed camping "is allowed in many parts of the Prescott National Forest" - but "in the Prescott Basin, camping is ONLY allowed in designated dispersed sites or at developed campgrounds" (sites marked by a vertical steel post with a "Dispersed Campsite" decal), and camping is prohibited in the described Highway 260 corridor zones (Order 03-09-05-24-09). source

Keep your distance

  • Keep-away corridor zones, not a uniform distance: Order 03-09-05-24-09 prohibits camping on (1) NFS lands east of AZ SR 260 to the Verde River's west shoreline, (2) NFS lands within 4.5 miles west of SR 260 from West Mingus Avenue in Cottonwood southeast to I-17, and (3) NFS lands at the I-17/SR 260 junction extending southeast along SR 260. In effect Jan 7, 2025 - Jan 7, 2027. Read the order map before camping near the Highway 260 corridor (Verde Valley). source

Roads and vehicle access

Check the motor vehicle use map

"Motor Vehicle Use Maps (MVUMs) show which routes (roads and trails) are open to motor vehicle travel..." - "the published hard copy MVUM is the legal document-of-record" used "to determine which roads are open, and how far you are allowed to drive off of the road." In the Prescott Basin, each designated dispersed campsite has its own parking spot.

Fires right now

We don't watch this forest's fire orders yet — check its own site before you light anything. Here's what stage 1 and stage 2 mean when an order is up.

Closures and special orders

Rules checked against the pages linked above — the full list is below the card.

Rules change by forest order and posted signage — confirm with the Forest Supervisor's Office, Prescott at (928) 777-2200 before you go.

How to read these rules

Dispersed camping means camping outside a developed campground — no fee, no table, no toilet, no water. You pick an already-used spot, pack out everything you brought, and the rules above are the whole deal you're agreeing to. The stay limit counts the way the card says it counts, not the way it counts on the forest next door: some places count per spot, some across the whole forest, some inside a radius, and moving a short distance often doesn't restart the clock.

Distance rules come in two shapes. Keep-away rules ("at least 100 feet from water") protect the thing you're camping near; stay-close rules ("within 300 feet of the road") keep vehicles on ground that can take them. A line marked recommended on the card is the office's guidance, not an order — the rest are enforceable rules, and a posted sign at the site beats everything on this page.

The motor vehicle use map is the legal answer to "can I drive in there to camp" — if a road isn't on it, that road is closed to your vehicle, and many forests only allow roadside camping along the roads the map marks for it. It's a free PDF; download it before you lose signal.

Fires are a separate rule with a separate clock. Nothing on this page says you can light one — the card's fire line says where that answer lives today. If a fire is allowed when you get there, buy your wood near camp — hauling firewood from home is how tree-killing pests reach new forests, and the BTU chart says what that local bundle is actually worth.

Where these rules come from

Every rule above was read on the forest's own pages and orders on the dates shown — nothing here is borrowed from another forest or an old guidebook. The managing agency is U.S. Forest Service, Southwestern Region (R3).

Before you go