Okmulgee PHA Entrance 4 Camping Area (Okmulgee WMA)

public land records

Thin — A single weak source put this here. Treat the location itself as unconfirmed, not just the details.

UNRESOLVED: ODWC's GIS calls this whole area "Okmulgee Wildlife Management Area", but its regulations split it into "Okmulgee GMA" and "Okmulgee PHA" with DIFFERENT camping rules -- and one of those two may forbid camping outright. A coordinate alone does not tell us which sub-unit this point falls in. Do not publish this row until someone checks which unit it is on. AREA RULE (https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/hunting/regs/public-hunting-areas-special-regulations, read 2026-08-16): ODWC Special Regulations heading "Okmulgee GMA" (county: Okmulgee) -- Additional Restrictions, verbatim: "Closed to all nonhunting activities from Oct. 1 - Feb. 15. No camping allowed." ALSO: ODWC Special Regulations heading "Okmulgee PHA" (county: Okmulgee) -- Additional Restrictions, verbatim: "Closed to all nonhunting activities, except hunter camping, from Oct. 1 - Feb. 15. Hunter and angler camping is allowed in designated areas." LEGAL BASIS -- ODWC Department-Managed Area Rules, https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/hunting/regs/department-managed-area-rules, read 2026-08-16, verbatim: "Camping is limited to a maximum of 16 consecutive days, and for no more than 21 days total in any 30-day period on the same WMA. Camping on these areas is limited to two days longer than the period the camper (hunter) is authorized to hunt. Leaving a campsite unattended for a period longer than 48 hours is prohibited. Unattended camp items will be removed. Quiet hours are enforced from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. All dogs or other pets must be kept on a leash or otherwise confined while in camping areas." FIRE -- same page, verbatim: "Fires shall be confined to those areas designated for camping and shall be contained in fireplaces, fire rings, grills, or other facilities designed for this purpose. Fires shall not be left unattended and must be completely extinguished prior to departure." ODWC does not publish a statewide seasonal fire ban on this page; Oklahoma county burn bans are issued separately and are not reflected here. Also verbatim from that page: "Public lands not specifically listed as open are closed." Read the area's own regulation before you go. THIS IS NOT A FEE-FREE PLACE TO ENTER -- fee=0 on this row means ODWC publishes NO per-night camping charge, not that access is free. ODWC's license fee table (https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/licensing/regs/license-fees, read 2026-08-16) states verbatim that an "Annual Wildlife Conservation Passport" is "Required of all persons 18 or older who enter Department owned lands, regardless of residency, unless exempt" at $46 for residents and $239 for nonresidents, and a "3-Day Wildlife Conservation Passport" at $26 / $51. A separate $100 / $200 "Land Access Permit" is "Required for residents ages 18 to 63, and nonresidents of any age, including lifetime license holders to access certain ODWC managed properties." ODWC's fee table says "unless exempt" but does not list the exemptions on that page, so we do not state who is exempt. Treat this as: budget for a permit, and check odwc before you drive. ODWC camp type: "Primitive". ODWC open dates: "Year round, except closed to nonhunting activities other than hunter camping from Oct. 1st to Feb. 15 and during spring turkey season.". Restroom per ODWC: No. Showers per ODWC: No. Picnic area per ODWC: No. Grills per ODWC: No. WATER: ODWC's layer carries no drinking-water field for camping areas and this row claims none. Do not treat any lake, creek or pond near these sites as potable. COORDINATE PROVENANCE: latitude and longitude are ODWC's own, from its public ArcGIS service https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/server/rest/services/PublicWILMA/WILMAFeatures/MapServer/4 (layer 4, 'Camping Areas'), queried 2026-08-16 with where=1=1 outSR=4326. Every ingested point carries OPENTOPUBL='Yes' in that layer. No geocoding was used. Nearest town: Beggs ~5.7 mi. 'Nearest town' is STRAIGHT-LINE distance to the nearest OpenStreetMap place=city/town/village and is NOT a driving distance -- on a Corps lake shoreline or in the Ouachitas the road in is routinely two or three times longer. Ingest 2026-08-16. STATUS=pending: this is a lead for review, not published. ||| NIGHT-SHIFT REVIEW 2026-08-19 (fire 1090, Oklahoma pass 3, reviewer=nightshift-verified). BULK RE-CHECK done this fire against ODWC's own live ArcGIS layer 4 'Camping Areas' (https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/server/rest/services/PublicWILMA/WILMAFeatures/MapServer/4/query?where=1=1&outFields=*&outSR=4326&f=json, read 2026-08-19; 299 features returned): of the 144 pending Oklahoma odwc_camp rows, 0 had vanished from the layer, 0 had moved more than 0.02 mi from the stored coordinate, and 0 had lost OPENTOPUBL='Yes'. The two rules pages cited above were also re-read verbatim on 2026-08-19 and are UNCHANGED: Department-Managed Area Rules (https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/hunting/regs/department-managed-area-rules) still states "Camping is limited to a maximum of 16 consecutive days, and for no more than 21 days total in any 30-day period on the same WMA" and "Public lands not specifically listed as open are closed."; the licence-fee table (https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/licensing/regs/license-fees) still states the Wildlife Conservation Passport is "Required of all persons 18 or older who enter Department owned lands, regardless of residency, unless exempt". So the coordinate and the statewide rules HOLD UP. DECISION: APPROVED. Independent second source fetched this fire that this row did not previously cite -- ODWC's own Okmulgee PHA area page, https://www.wildlifedepartment.com/hunting/wma/northeast/okmulgee-pha (read 2026-08-19), Camping/Facilities section, verbatim: "A primitive camping area is located just inside Entrance #4 on the Public Hunting Area and Okmulgee State Park is located just one half mile east of the main entrance to the Game Management Area on highway 56." This row is ODWC's own point named SITENAME='Okmulgee PHA Entrance 4 Camping Area' -- the ONE camping area ODWC's prose describes, at the exact entrance named. That is the strongest corroboration available for an Okmulgee point and is why this row is approved while the other four Okmulgee rows are held. The same page's driving directions read "Entrance #4 -- From Beggs: 1.4 miles south on U.S. Hwy 75 ALT, right on Webster Rd, 4.2 miles south on Webster Rd to entrance on right", which is consistent with this coordinate (roughly 4.5 mi south of Beggs, slightly west); I did NOT drive-test it. CRITICAL RESTRICTIONS -- special-regulations page, heading "Okmulgee PHA", verbatim (read 2026-08-19): "Hunter and angler camping is allowed in designated areas." and "Closed to all nonhunting activities, except hunter camping, from Oct. 1 - Feb. 15." ODWC's layer repeats the closure in OPENDATES. So for roughly four and a half months a year this is hunter-camping-only. BEWARE: the ADJOINING "Okmulgee GMA" is a SEPARATE area whose special-regulations entry reads verbatim "No camping allowed." -- do not let a published page blur the two. DE-DUPE: matched on COORDINATES against all 163 published+approved Oklahoma rows; nearest is 8.98 mi. Not a duplicate. ||| ADDENDUM (same fire, 2026-08-19) -- RESOLVING THE PRE-EXISTING 'UNRESOLVED' FLAG AT THE TOP OF THIS NOTE, which said a coordinate alone cannot tell us whether this point is on the GMA or the PHA sub-unit, and told a later fire not to publish until someone checked. RESOLVED, and here is exactly what resolved it. (1) ODWC ITSELF labels this point as the PHA: the SITENAME field on this feature in ODWC's live layer 4 reads verbatim 'Okmulgee PHA Entrance 4 Camping Area' (read 2026-08-19). The sub-unit is not being inferred from the coordinate -- the agency wrote it on the record. (2) ODWC's Okmulgee PHA page names camping at that exact entrance: "A primitive camping area is located just inside Entrance #4 on the Public Hunting Area". (3) The two sub-units really do differ, which is why this mattered: the special-regulations entry for "Okmulgee GMA" reads verbatim "No camping allowed.", while "Okmulgee PHA" reads "Hunter and angler camping is allowed in designated areas." This point is on the permissive side of that split. WHAT DID NOT RESOLVE IT, stated plainly so nobody re-runs it expecting more: I queried ODWC's layer 1 'Entrances' (same MapServer) hoping to confirm the entrance number geometrically. It returns only 5 Okmulgee features and its ONLY descriptive field is WMANAME='Okmulgee Wildlife Management Area' -- it carries no entrance number and no GMA/PHA sub-unit label, so it cannot confirm which entrance is #4. There is an entrance feature 0.268 mi from this camping point, which is CONSISTENT with 'just inside Entrance #4' but does not by itself prove it. ODWC's MapServer publishes NO WMA boundary polygon layer, so no point-in-polygon test of the GMA/PHA split is possible from that service. The approval therefore rests on ODWC's own SITENAME plus ODWC's own prose, not on geometry.

Read from the agency's own season / closure text in this record (data/conditions.py) and checked against the calendar. The words we read are printed under the verdict at the top of the page.

US DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center station locator, snapshot 2026-09-16. Straight-line miles to the nearest public, open, unrestricted station; restricted and planned units are shown but never counted.

On the agency's books. The land manager inventoried this site, so its existence is not in question — current conditions are. Nobody from here has camped it recently.