USFS

U.S. Forest Service (USFS)

USFS manages 193 million acres of National Forest and National Grassland land. Dispersed camping is allowed across most of it, governed by per-district Motor Vehicle Use Maps.

What USFS is

The U.S. Forest Service sits inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers 154 National Forests and 20 National Grasslands totaling about 193 million acres across all 50 states (with the largest holdings in the West and Alaska).

Like BLM, USFS is generally permissive about dispersed camping outside developed campgrounds. The default rule is that you can camp anywhere not specifically closed, with a 14-day stay limit similar to BLM's. The defining USFS document is the Motor Vehicle Use Map (MVUM).

The Motor Vehicle Use Map

Each USFS Ranger District publishes an annual MVUM that designates which roads, trails, and dispersed-camping corridors are legally open to motor-vehicle use. The MVUM is the legal source of truth — if a road is not on the MVUM as open, you can't drive it, and you can't camp at the end of it. MVUMs are free to download from each forest's website and from third-party apps like Avenza Maps.

Many MVUMs include a 'dispersed camping corridor' along certain roads, marked as a buffer (usually 300 feet) within which you can pull off and camp without driving on a designated route. This is the cleanest way to dispersed-camp on USFS land: drive a designated road, find an existing pull-out within the corridor, camp there.

Wilderness areas inside National Forests

About 36 million acres of USFS land are designated Wilderness under the 1964 Wilderness Act. Wilderness rules are stricter: no motor vehicles, no mechanized travel (including bikes), and dispersed camping with restrictions on group size and Leave No Trace practice. You can backpack into Wilderness and dispersed-camp, but you cannot drive into it.

Wilderness areas are usually marked with brown signs and shown clearly on USFS maps. They are often the highest-quality, lowest-impact dispersed-camping land in the country if you're willing to walk a few miles.