Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve)
Inside a national park unit
This camp sits inside Big Cypress National Preserve — a national preserve run by the National Park Service.
Park rules apply, and they are stricter than dispersed camping: inside a National Park Service unit you camp in a designated campground or on a backcountry permit, not wherever you find a flat spot. Check the park before you go: nps.gov/bicy ↗
Placed by point-in-polygon against the National Park Service’s own boundary layer (NPS Land Resources Division, 442 units, fetched 18 Sep 2026; this unit’s polygon edited 2019-09-26). Nothing about the price or the legal status on this page was changed by it.
Bear Island is the quiet end of Big Cypress National Preserve, up Turner River Road at the end of about twenty miles of secondary gravel, and it is the one campground in this batch that is not free - the NPS charges $10 a night for a tent site, $5 if you hold an America the Beautiful Senior or Access pass. For south Florida that is still about as cheap as legal camping gets. Forty designated sites; sites 1 through 12 stay open all year, sites 13 through 40 only from August 15 to April 15, which tells you what the wet season does to this place. Reservations are required - all Big Cypress campgrounds went reservation-only, booked up to six months ahead through recreation.gov - so do not just turn up. The NPS describes it as a "primitive campground with no water" with vault toilets, so bring everything you intend to drink. Generators are permitted here, which they are not at most of the preserve. The preserve-wide ceiling on any camping is 180 days in a 12-month period. Gator Head and Pink Jeep, two nine-site backcountry campgrounds reachable on foot or by permitted off-road vehicle, sit nearby in the same unit. The nearest town is Ave Maria, roughly 15.3 miles away in a straight line - the drive is longer, and on some of these approaches a good deal longer.
Everything you need — measured from Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve) · National Park Service · FL
- FFuel10 mi
- HHardware15 mi
- +Urgent care15 mi
- GGrocery15 mi
- RxPharmacy19 mi
- MMechanic19 mi
- @Mail20 mi
- ShShower20 mi
- AAir-up24 mi
- OOutfitter24 mi
- WWater24 mi
- EVEV fast charger24 mi
- DDump25 mi
- LLaundry25 mi
- PPropane51 mi
The read: water is a real 24-mi drive, fuel & food sit about 10 mi out.
One dot per need — the nearest of each kind, straight-line from camp. Places from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors); the EV fast charger from the US DOE station locator. Open in Google Maps ↗
The site — Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve)
Nearby & resupply — around Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve) · National Park Service · FL (OpenStreetMap)
- Water featurenone named within 1 mi (USGS NHD)
- Nearest townAve Maria · ~15.3 mi
- Nearest rail linenone mapped within 10 mi
- Nearest highway~1.2 mi · Interstate 75
- Drinking waternone within 10 mi
- FuelEstacion de servicio Gasolinera · ~10.2 mi
- Propane / LPGnone within 31 mi
- Dump station~25.3 mi
- GroceriesMobil Mart · ~15.4 mi
- PharmacyBenzer Pharmacy · ~19.3 mi
- Hospital / clinicDeVita Dialysis · ~15.3 mi
- HardwareACE Hardware · ~15.3 mi
EV charging — from Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve) · National Park Service · FL — nearest public DC fast & Level 2 (US DOE station data)
- Nearest public DC fast charger24.3 mi straight-line E — Ochopee, FL - Tesla Supercharger (at a rest stop) · Tesla · NACS (Tesla) · 12 fast ports listed · listed open, last confirmed by AFDC 2026-06-18 · hours: 24 hours daily. NACS partner enabled. · directions
- Public DC fast stations within reach1 within 25 mi · 36 within 50 · 304 within 100 · 478 within 150
- Nearest listing CCS27.4 mi — Walmart 5055 (Naples, FL), Naples
- Nearest listing CHAdeMO31.2 mi — City Mattress, Naples
- Nearest public Level 2 (J1772)26.3 mi — FPL EVOLUTION COLLIER COUNT 2, Naples, FL · ChargePoint Network · J1772 · 2 Level 2 ports listed · listed open, last confirmed by AFDC 2026-09-16 · hours: 24 hours daily
- Pricing at the fast chargernot listed
- Power (kW)not listed by AFDC — “DC fast” spans roughly 24 to 350 kW, so ask the network.
- Read this honestlyStraight-line miles, like every distance on this site. Roads run longer than this, and you have to get back. We know where a charger is listed. We don’t know if it works today, how fast it is, or the road miles. Check the network before you commit.
Snapshot 2026-09-16 · AFDC record 153883 · US DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center
Nearby restrooms — around Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve) · National Park Service · FL — pit toilets, restrooms & rest areas (government data)
- RestroomGH - Gator Head, Vault Toilet Bldg. A134 · ~3.1 mi NW · NPS
- RestroomPJ - Pink Jeep, Vault Toilet Bldg. A133 · ~3.7 mi NW · NPS
- RestroomFederal restroom · ~6.2 mi W · FWS
- RestroomBI - Bear Island Vault Toilet Bldg. A157 · ~8.3 mi SE · NPS
Coming out here — Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve) · National Park Service · FL
- No named surface water mapped within 1 mi of the pin in USGS's National Hydrography Dataset (data refreshed October 2022), and none within about a mile and a half in our OpenStreetMap pull — which is not proof there is none, only that neither map has one. Plan to carry washing water as well as drinking water.
- Ground slope around the pin: about 0.8% — flat. Measured on USGS's 3DEP elevation model (1 m data here), sampled every 10 metres around the point. That is the hillside, not the ground under your wheels — a graded pullout or a bench a few metres across is too small to show up at that spacing, and nobody has checked this one for you.
- No rail line is mapped within 10 mi of the pin in the FRA/BTS North American Rail Network (data updated Jul 21, 2026) — abandoned, lifted and out-of-service track excluded, so a rail-trail does not count as one.
- Interstate 75 is mapped ~1.2 mi from the pin. Straight-line, from the Census's TIGER/Line primary roads (TIGER/Line 2025, released Oct 2025) — the divided, limited-access highways, which is why a state expressway or a two-lane US route near this camp would not appear here.
- Power: Dave carries his own — batteries or solar. A generator will run your rig and it is also the thing everybody camped near you can hear.
- Getting online: Dave recommends Starlink. He has had it since SpaceX introduced it, used it for four years living on the road, and it delivers as promised — several hundred nights out, and he can count on one hand the places he could not connect. The cable on his unit runs 150 feet, which is usually all it takes to find enough sky. Starlink → Referral link — Starlink pays Dave $100 in cash if you sign up through it, and that money funds this site and the next trip. It costs you nothing and does not change the recommendation.
Open Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve) elsewhere
Other camps near Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve)
If this one is full, gated or washed out.
Who holds the land at Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve)
USGS’s Protected Areas Database (PAD-US 4.1, queried 2026-09-23) lists the ground at this pin as Big Cypress National Preserve, manager on record: National Park Service (federal). That names who holds the land — it is not a statement that camping is permitted here.
How we know this — Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve)
What we don’t know about Bear Island Campground (Big Cypress National Preserve)
A land record can put you within a few meters of a spot. It cannot tell you any of this — so check it yourself, and treat anything below as the open question it is.
- Road surface & last-mile access
- How many rigs actually fit
- Cell coverage by carrier
- Current fire restrictions
- Whether any water here is drinkable
- Shade & wind exposure
- Noise and who else shows up
- Whether a listed EV charger works today, or the road miles to it