We haven't personally camped here. Everything below is pulled from public land data, USGS maps and OpenStreetMap — a real place on public land, but not field-checked by us. Confirm road conditions, current access, stay limits and fire restrictions before you go.
FREE primitive camping in the Cranberry Lake Wild Forest, part of New York's Adirondack Forest Preserve in the northwestern Adirondacks -- Towns of Fine, Clifton, Colton and Piercefield, St. Lawrence County (DEC Region 6), on and around Cranberry Lake. DEC-designated primitive tent site ('Curtis Pond'). New York provides these designated primitive tent sites at NO CHARGE -- the DEC page lists the fee as 'Free' -- and they are first-come, first-served and cannot be reserved. DEEP BACKCOUNTRY -- THE MOST REMOTE SITE IN THIS BATCH. Curtis Pond is an inland pond well east of Cranberry Lake, and DEC's page does not describe this campsite or how to reach it; it describes the forty-six shoreline sites and leaves the inland ponds undescribed. From DEC's own coordinates, the nearest published access point is the Otterbrook Road parking area, about 4.1 miles away in a STRAIGHT LINE, and real travel distance will be considerably longer than that. This is a site for people who are already comfortable navigating off a described route -- confirm it with the Potsdam office before you go. PERMITS: DEC states the rule for this side of the lake in its own words -- "Campsites on the north side of the lake within the Cranberry Lake Wild Forest require a permit from a Forest Ranger for stays longer than 3 nights or for groups of more than 9 people" -- and every site in this batch is on that Cranberry Lake Wild Forest side. The permit itself is free. Arrange any permit in advance through the DEC Region 6 Potsdam Office at 315-265-3090 (Mon-Fri, 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM). Camp only at the marked site -- DEC says these sites are "designated with yellow markers" -- because elsewhere on the Forest Preserve camping is prohibited within 150 feet of any road, trail or water. These are primitive sites: typically just a fire ring, no hookups, no toilets and no potable water, so treat any water you take from the lake or a pond. Pack out all trash, follow Leave No Trace and the DEC fire rules, and store food away from black bears. DO NOT CONFUSE THIS WITH THE CRANBERRY LAKE CAMPGROUND AND DAY USE AREA, which DEC describes on the same page -- that is DEC's developed campground just east of the Village of Cranberry Lake, with showers, a beach, a dump station and graded tent/trailer pads, and it CHARGES. This site charges nothing and has none of that. ONE THING ON DEC'S PAGE THAT DOES *NOT* APPLY HERE, so you do not turn around for nothing: because DEC covers this whole area on one 'Cranberry Lake Complex' page, that page carries the line "There is no public access to the Massawepie Easement from June 15 through August 31." That closure is about the separate 3,048-acre Massawepie Conservation Easement several miles east of here, not about this campsite -- this site is on Cranberry Lake Wild Forest Forest Preserve, which the same page lists as open generally year-round. Confirm current rules, road and trail conditions and this site's status on the DEC page (dec.ny.gov/places/cranberry-lake-complex) or with the Potsdam office before you go; we have not visited.
Researched — The record is detailed and internally consistent, and the coordinates land where the managing agency says this site is.
How it was placed
NY DEC 'Primitive Campsite' GIS layer (https://gisservices.dec.ny.gov/arcgis/rest/services/dil/dil_land_assets_prm_cmp/MapServer/0), ASSET_UID 3471, NAME verbatim 'Curtis Pond', ASSET='PRIMITIVE TENT SITE', PUBLICUSE='Y', FACILITY='Cranberry Lake Wild Forest'; coordinate is DEC's own point geometry (WGS84), pulled 2026-07-23 via the layer's /find endpoint (honours sr=4326; /query returns projected UTM). FREE confirmed on dec.ny.gov/places/cranberry-lake-complex (Cranberry Lake Complex, read 2026-07-23): Fee='Free', 'Open for Recreation: Generally year-round, except on the Massawepie Easement', 'Forty-six of the tent sites line the shores of Cranberry Lake and Joe Indian Island', 'All camp sites and lean-tos are available on a first come, first served basis', 'Campsites on the north side of the lake within the Cranberry Lake Wild Forest require a permit from a Forest Ranger for stays longer than 3 nights or for groups of more than 9 people'. NOTE THE SLUG: there is no 'cranberry-lake-wild-forest' page (404); this Wild Forest is governed by the COMBINED 'Cranberry Lake Complex' page, which also covers the Conifer-Emporium and Massawepie Conservation Easements. NO LAUNCH OR DAY-USE FEE is stated anywhere on that page (explicitly checked -- guardrail 2); the shoreline route DEC gives is the PUBLIC boat launch on Columbian Road. COUNT: GIS 31 for this facility vs the page's 46 shoreline sites, and the arithmetic closes exactly -- 27 of the 31 are numbered shoreline records covering 26 distinct numbers (2-15, 19-25, 42-46; 27 records because site 6 has a '6 B'), the 20 numbers absent (1, 16, 17, 18, 26-41) are the SOUTH-side sites the same page assigns to the Five Ponds Wilderness, and 26 + 20 = 46; the Five Ponds fire already ingested south-side sites 17 and 18 under FACILITY='Five Ponds Wilderness'. The other 4 records (Curtis Pond, Dog Pond Campsite 1, Hedgehog Pond Campsite, Peavine Swamp Loop 1 Campsite) are inland sites additional to the 46 shoreline sites. The 3 lean-tos (Bear Mountain, Burntbridge Pond, Peavine Swamp) are a different asset class, correctly absent. SCOPE: the page covers more than this facility but disclaims no part of the Wild Forest; all 31 records carry FACILITY='Cranberry Lake Wild Forest' exactly, so no foreign extras. PAID-CAMPGROUND GUARD: verified NOT inside the Cranberry Lake Campground and Day Use Area (OSM relation 6388984, bbox 44.18284-44.20687 N / -74.83228..-74.82022 W), the paid DEC campground described on this same page; the ingester aborts rather than write a site inside that bounding box. A GIS FACILITY search for 'Cranberry Lake Campground' returns 0 records -- fee-campground sites are not in this layer. MASSAWEPIE-CLOSURE GUARD: this site is 7.0 mi from the nearest published Massawepie Easement access coordinate, well outside the 3,048-acre easement that is closed to public access June 15 - August 31; the ingester aborts on any site within 3.0 mi of those coordinates. Plus DEC State Land Camping Rules (dec.ny.gov/things-to-do/camping/state-land-rules, re-read 2026-07-23): 150-foot rule, free Forest Ranger permit for the thresholds DEC states above, arranged via the DEC Region 6 Potsdam Office at 315-265-3090 (Mon-Fri, 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM). Access classified as 'hike' from DEC's own prose; nearest DEC-published access coordinate the Otterbrook Road parking area, 4.06 mi straight-line. Ingest 2026-07-23.
Field check
Not verified on the ground. Nobody from here has camped it. It stays at Researched until someone does.
What we don’t know
A land record can put you within a few metres of a spot. It cannot tell you any of this — so check it yourself, and treat anything below as the open question it is.
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