Free Dispersed Camping in California: Where We Actually Pull In

The granite in the Alabama Hills is older than the Sierra crest rising behind it; the rounded boulders weathered out of the same Jurassic pluton that built Mount Whitney, but they sat low and patient while the range went up, so they read on Instagram as Martian and in person look mostly like granite. I mention this because every California dispersed-camping list opens with Alabama Hills, and most of them do not mention that the BLM has, in recent seasons, tightened rules considerably — the area is loved past its capacity, and the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Reservation sits a few miles east of land that was Nüümü and Newe long before it was a B-western backlot.

Free camping in California is real, and it is shrinking. National forests still allow dispersed camping on most undeveloped land, BLM land does too, and a fair amount of the state's best nights cost zero dollars and require nothing but a map, a shovel, and the discipline to leave the spot indistinguishable from how you found it. What follows is where I actually pull in — not where the algorithm sends me.

The Eastern Sierra and the US-395 Problem

US-395 is the spine of free camping in this state and also its most photographed corridor, which means the easy spots are now the hard spots. Alabama Hills (BLM Bishop Field Office, off Movie Road west of Lone Pine) still permits dispersed camping in designated zones, with a free permit required in peak months — check the BLM site, not a Pinterest pin from 2018. The Sierra rises 10,000 feet in roughly twelve miles here; the geolgoical drama is real, the privacy is not.

I prefer Buttermilk Country west of Bishop, reached by Buttermilk Road off CA-168. It is BLM, it is free, the bouldering crowd knows it intimately, and on a weekday in October the wind off the Sierra is the only neighbor you will have. Further north on 395, Hartley Springs (Inyo National Forest, between June Lake Junction and Mammoth) is technically a free Forest Service campground rather than true dispersed — no fee, no water, primitive sites under Jeffrey pine — and the nearby Glass Creek Meadow dispersed area along Glass Creek Road is the one I send friends to when they want quiet without committing to a washboard road.

Inyo NF rules dispersed camping in surprising detail (campfire permits required statewide on federal land in California, fire restrictions seasonal, no camping within 100 feet of water on most ranger districts — the the Mammoth and Mono Lake districts have their own overlays). Read the district page before you commit.

The Northwest Corner: Six Rivers, Klamath, Shasta-Trinity

This is the part of California most people skip, and it is where I do most of my actual dispersed camping. Six Rivers National Forest along the Smith River — the only major undammed river system left in the state — has pullouts along South Fork Road and Gasquet-Orleans Road (the "GO Road," a piece of contested logging-era history; the road's completion was halted in part by the 1988 Supreme Court case Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery, and it remains unfinished, which is the only reason the high country between the forks is still wild).

In Shasta-Trinity, the McCloud River corridor east of the town of McCloud has dispersed sites along Forest Road 38N53, and the back side of Trinity Lake (off CA-3 north of Weaverville) has pullouts on the unpaved spurs that locals have been using since long before Recreation.gov existed. The Wintu were displaced from much of this country when Shasta Dam went in during the 1940s — worth knowing before you cook dinner on their old village sites.

Klamath National Forest, along the Salmon River out of Etna or Forks of Salmon, is honest dispersed country: narrow roads, almost no signage, no cell service, and the sense — accurate — that nobody is coming to help you if you get it wrong. I love it there in late September.

The Coast Range and Lake Country

Mendocino National Forest is California's only national forest without a paved through-road, which tells you what you need to know. The M1 (Forest Highway 7) climbs from Upper Lake toward Lake Pillsbury, and the dispersed sites along the Eel River and the Lake Pillsbury basin remain some of the cheapest gorgeous nights in the state — though fire closures have been heavy in recent seasons, and the Pillsbury area's future as a reservoir is genuinely up in the air (PG&E has been moving toward decommissioning the Scott Dam, which would change everything about how this place looks within a decade.

Closer to the Bay Area, BLM Cow Mountain east of Ukiah has free dispersed sites along the ridge road, with a south unit (OHV, loud) and a north unit (quiet, oak-grassland, deer everywhere). BLM Cache Creek near Clearlake Oaks is another one — chaparral, tule elk if you're paying attention, and a road that turns to grease after rain.

The High Northeast: Modoc, Lassen, Plumas

If you want California without other people in it, drive to Modoc County. Modoc National Forest wraps the South Warner Wilderness; dispersed camping along Forest Road 31 and around Patterson and Soup Springs is essentially unlimited, and you will not see another camper midweek even in July. This was Modoc and Achomawi country, and the 1872–73 Modoc War ended only a few mountains west of here at Captain Jack's Stronghold in what is now Lava Beds National Monument — that history sits heavily on the land if you let it.

Lassen National Forest has the Hat Creek corridor (CA-89 north of Old Station) with dispersed pullouts along Forest Road 33N25 and the Pacific Crest Trail crossings — thru-hikers stage here in July, locals fish here in September. Plumas National Forest around Bucks Lake and the Middle Fork Feather River has more dispersed options than any guidebook lists; the CCC built most of the developed campgrounds in the Plumas in the late 1930s, and many of the original pack-stock spurs are still drivable and unmarked.

Southern Sierra and Sequoia National Forest

The Kern River drainage in Sequoia National Forest is the southern Sierra's best free-camping country, with dispersed sites along Sherman Pass Road (Forest Road 22S05) climbing out of Kernville toward the Kern Plateau — high lodgepole and red fir, almost ten thousand feet, snow well into June some years. Lower down, the Kern River canyon itself has fee campgrounds; the free dispersed is up high. Stanislaus National Forest along CA-108 (the Sonora Pass road) has good pullouts in the Clark Fork drainage, and Sierra National Forest behind Huntington Lake (Kaiser Pass Road toward Florence and Edison Lakes) has dispersed sites that require a slow, careful drive on a one-lane paved road that was, against all odds, paved in the 1950s.

One note: a lot of southern Sierra dispersed land sits inside fire-scar mosaics now — Creek Fire, Castle Fire, Windy Fire, French Fire. Hazard trees fall without warning in burn areas for years after. Look up before you pitch a tent. I cannot say this strongly enough, and I am not going to write a whole gear lecture, but the only piece of gear that matters in a burn scar is your situational awareness about what is over your head.

Gotchas — Things to Actually Check Before You Go

• California Campfire Permit — required year-round on all federal land (BLM, USFS, NPS) for any stove, fire, or lantern. Free, online, ten-minute video. Most people who get cited didn't know it covered stoves.
• District-specific fire restrictions — change weekly in summer. The USFS recreation page is the place to start; the district office phone number is better.
• 14-day stay limits — standard on most national forests and BLM, sometimes shorter near population centers. Then you must move a set distance (often 25–30 miles).
• Pack out human waste in alpine zones and along major rivers — the Eastern Sierra in particular has moved this direction, with WAG bags available at most trailheads.
• No camping within 100–200 feet of water on most CA national forests. Varies by district.
• Road conditions — "improved dirt" on a Forest Service map means something different in May than in September. Call the ranger district.
• Cell service is the exception, not the rule — download maps offline. I use the Forest Service Motor Vehicle Use Map (MVUM) layer in Avenza.
• Closures don't always make it onto AllTrails — cross-check with the agency. AllTrails California is useful for trailheads but not authoritative on dispersed camping.

A Note on State Land, and What This Post Doesn't Cover

California state parks do not allow free dispersed camping — every overnight in a CA state park is a paid, designated site, full stop, despite what some YouTube videos imply. If you're looking at the state parks system, plan to pay and to reserve. The free stuff lives on BLM and national forest land, plus the occasional county or local district parcel. I also haven't covered the desert — Anza-Borrego, Mojave Preserve backcountry, Trona, the dunes — because that's a different essay and a different set of risks. (Anza-Borrego is one of the only state parks in the country that allows free dispersed roadside camping, an exception so large it really does deserve its own piece.

If you want a structured starting place for the developed side of things, our parks index is one entry; trail pages often note nearby dispersed corridors. For the hiking approach to this — pick the trail first, find the legal sleep within a few miles — that's how I plan most of my own trips.

Honest Take

If I had one weekend and a working vehicle, I would drive to Modoc or to the Plumas in late September, when the aspens turn and the heat breaks and the campgrounds empty. Free camping in California rewards shoulder-season patience more than it rewards optimization. The Eastern Sierra is glorious and crowded; the northwest is wet and quiet; the southern Sierra is high and burned in patches. None of it is hidden — people call dispersed camping a hidden gem and it is not hidden, it is on a public map drawn by a federal agency — but a lot of it is still genuinely good, and the way to keep it good is to camp on durable surfaces, leave the fire ring small or skip it entirely, and treat the 14-day limit as a ceiling rather than a goal. A solid tent, a warm enough bag for the elevation you're actually at (not the elevation of the town below), and a stove you've used before are enough. The rest is reading the map and showing up on a Tuesday.