What is a wilderness area, and can you camp in one?
The short answer
A wilderness area is federal land that Congress has designated under the Wilderness Act of 1964 to stay undeveloped. Roads, motor vehicles and mechanical transport, including bicycles, are not allowed. You can camp in most wilderness, but only by walking or riding stock in, and many areas need an overnight permit.
What the law says
The Wilderness Act, signed on September 3, 1964, describes wilderness as an area “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Inside it, the act allows “no temporary road, no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, no landing of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and no structure or installation.”
Wilderness is not a separate agency’s land. It lies inside national forests, BLM land, national parks and wildlife refuges, and the managing agency sets the camping rules within it.
Camping in wilderness
Dispersed camping in wilderness means backpacking or packing in with stock. Rules are often stricter than on the surrounding land:
- Overnight permits, sometimes with quotas in summer, such as Desolation Wilderness in Eldorado National Forest.
- Group-size limits for people and stock.
- Larger required distances from lakes, streams and trails, and campfire bans above certain elevations.
On the map
The scouting map shows wilderness boundaries as you zoom in. A forest road that ends at a wilderness boundary is as far as a vehicle can go, and the Motor Vehicle Use Map shows no routes inside.
Sources
- The Wilderness Act of 1964, Wilderness Connect
- 16 U.S.C. 1131, National Wilderness Preservation System, Legal Information Institute
- Desolation Wilderness permits, Eldorado National Forest