onX Offroad Launches First-of-its-Kind Dispersed Camping Layer 

Illustrating where campers can legally find vehicle-accessible places to spend the night, reducing congestion and collective impact on public lands.

Just in time for the summer camping season, onX, the leader in outdoor digital navigation, today announced the launch of the industry’s first motorized Dispersed Camping Layer. This innovative feature makes finding legal, vehicle-accessible camping spots on roads and trails in National Forests easier and more intuitive than ever before. 

Dispersed camping is the practice of camping on public lands away from designated campgrounds or facilities. This type of camping has grown in popularity over the past five years because it offers a more remote, private, and natural experience away from the crowds, and doesn’t require reservations.

onX’s Dispersed Camping Layer is the first comprehensive source of motorized dispersed camping data, pinpointing nearly 140,000 miles (at launch) of roads and trails in the US National Forest System where the practice is allowed. When toggled on, the layer highlights these road and trail segments in bright yellow, and users can click on the road or trail for each area’s unique regulations. 

Before the new layer, campers relied on two options to find motorized dispersed camping. They could consult Forest Service PDFs, which are the authoritative source but lack interactivity, or user-generated content apps that marked individual sites with varying degrees of accuracy. Neither option allowed campers to view camping information in the context of their route or navigational app. As a result, campers would cobble together information without a clear picture of what was actually allowed or accessible–leading to overcrowding, environmental strain, and even closures in some cases.

“We’re thrilled to introduce a powerful solution that addresses a real challenge our community faces,” said onX Offroad Content Manager Chris Cordes. “To develop the layer, we asked land managers how we could better equip outdoor enthusiasts to access dispersed camping areas and reduce their collective impact on public lands. By highlighting all the legal camping corridors, instead of pinpointing a limited number of marked sites, the layer helps users spread out which helps disperse the environmental impact seen on popular sites pinned in other products. That’s a win for land managers. It’s also a win for outdoor enthusiasts, who, by spreading out, are finding the solitude they seek and simultaneously helping conserve outdoor destinations.”

At launch, the Dispersed Camping Layer includes vehicle-accessible corridors in US Forest Service lands in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. onX plans to expand the coverage nationwide later this summer, and include dispersed camping on other federal lands in the future. The layer is currently available to onX Offroad Premium and Elite users.  

For more information on the Dispersed Camping Layer and how to use this feature, visit https://www.onxmaps.com/offroad/app/features/dispersed-camping-maps