Agency-listedIDNR · dispersedFree

Waterloo Creek WMA

Drive-up · Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources · IA · 43.44740, -91.50343

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Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources lists this site. Someone from the agency inventoried it, so it is a real camp — not a spot we guessed at. What changes is conditions — roads, gates, closures, fire rules. Check those with the unit before you commit to the drive.

Iowa DNR Wildlife Management Area — about 1,980 acres across 4 separate parcels, Allamakee County. Primitive camping is allowed statewide on Iowa DNR wildlife areas by rule — no permit, no camping fee — for up to 14 consecutive days, UNLESS that area posts restrictions on site (Iowa Admin. Code r. 571-51.11). The DNR can close any individual area to camping just by putting up a sign, and there is no statewide list of which ones have, so read the signs at the entrance and treat a posted restriction as final. Iowa DNR's own camping article also says to stay 100+ yards from parking lots, boat ramps and jetties; that sentence was dropped from the rule in the June 2025 rewrite, but it is still good practice and may be posted locally. These are working wildlife areas, not campgrounds: expect a gravel parking area and nothing else — no water, no toilet, no table, no fire ring. Pack water in and everything out. Fall is a hard time to use these: Iowa's shotgun deer seasons and waterfowl season put a lot of hunters on WMAs, and blaze orange plus a different destination is the smarter call. The pin is a representative point inside the official DNR boundary, NOT a campsite or a parking lot — scout the actual access off the DNR atlas before you commit to it after dark.

USGS topo — contours & terrain

USGS topographic map of Waterloo Creek WMA

Aerial — USGS / NAIP

Weather outlook — at Waterloo Creek WMA

Loading the latest forecast…

Live NWS area forecast (~2.5 km grid, not elevation-corrected). Camp sits at 938 ft.

Fire & smoke — around Waterloo Creek WMANIFC · AirNow

Checking active fires & air quality…

Active wildfires from NIFC (within ~50 mi); air quality from AirNow. Always confirm current fire restrictions with the managing office before you go.

Everything you need — measured from Waterloo Creek WMA · Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources · IA

▲ your camp. Rings are 15, 30 and 60 straight-line miles; bearings are approximate and roads run longer.

Nearest of each

@Mail5 mi
+Urgent care10 mi
GGrocery10 mi
WWater10 mi
FFuel10 mi
HHardware10 mi
MMechanic10 mi
ShShower14 mi
DDump14 mi
OOutfitter16 mi
EVEV fast charger17 mi
LLaundry24 mi
RxPharmacy28 mi
PPropane31 mi
AAir-up51 mi

≤30 mi30–4545+water

The read: water's a short hop out, 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 — Waterloo Creek WMA

Access

Drive-up

Land

Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources · dispersed

Elevation

938 ft

Ground slope

41.9% · steep

State

Coordinates

43.44740, -91.50343

Cost

Free

Nearby & resupply — around Waterloo Creek WMA · Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources · IA (OpenStreetMap)

Water featureWaterloo Creek · ~0.1 mi · USGS: perennial stream
Drinking waternone within 10 mi
FuelBP · ~10.3 mi
Propane / LPGnone within 31 mi
Dump station~14.1 mi
GroceriesRed's IGA · ~10.1 mi
PharmacySterling Pharmacy · ~27.9 mi
Hospital / clinicGundersen Spring Grove Clinic · ~10.0 mi
HardwareHardware · ~10.3 mi
Rail & highwaynone mapped within 10 mi

EV charging — from Waterloo Creek WMA · Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources · IA — nearest public DC fast & Level 2 (US DOE station data)

Nearest public DC fast charger16.9 mi straight-line SW — Decorah Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram · Blink Network · CCS · 2 fast ports listed · listed open, last confirmed by AFDC 2026-09-16 · hours: 24 hours daily · directions
Public DC fast stations within reach1 within 25 mi · 14 within 50 · 91 within 100 · 385 within 150
Nearest listing NACS (Tesla)31.3 mi — Kwik Trip #762, La Crosse
Nearest listing CHAdeMO27.8 mi — DAHL HYUNDAI STATION2, La Crosse
Nearest public Level 2 (J1772)15.7 mi — LANSING EV LANSINGEV1 · 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 329946 · US DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center

Nearby restrooms — around Waterloo Creek WMA · Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources · IA — pit toilets, restrooms & rest areas (government data)

RestroomFederal restroom · ~15.4 mi E · FWS
RestroomFederal restroom · ~29.5 mi SE · NPS

Coming out here — Waterloo Creek WMA · Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources · IA

Surface water mapped nearby: USGS maps Waterloo Creek as a perennial stream, ~0.1 mi from the pin (National Hydrography Dataset, data refreshed October 2022). Mapped as perennial is not the same as flowing today. Nobody has checked it for you. Filter or boil anything you drink.
Ground slope around the pin: about 41.9% — steep. 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 and no interstate or US route is mapped within 10 mi of the pin. Checked against the FRA/BTS North American Rail Network (data updated Jul 21, 2026) and the Census's TIGER/Line primary roads (TIGER/Line 2025, released Oct 2025). Both are national files and both are maps of what is built, not counts of what moves on it.
Assume no services at all. Most dispersed camping in a national forest has none: no tap, no power, no dump, often no toilet. Everything you need, you bring.
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 Waterloo Creek WMA elsewhere

Google satellite →Gaia GPS →CalTopo →Back to the map →

Other camps near Waterloo Creek WMA

If this one is full, gated or washed out.

Who holds the land at Waterloo Creek WMA

USGS’s Protected Areas Database (PAD-US 4.1, queried 2026-09-23) lists the ground at this pin as Waterloo Creek Wildlife Management Area, manager on record: a state department of natural resources. That names who holds the land — it is not a statement that camping is permitted here.

How we know this — Waterloo Creek WMA

Stay limit

14 nights (14 consecutive days, unless posted)

Source

Iowa DNR (wildlife management areas)

Confidence

Likely — The record is good enough to put a pin on, but thin in places. Treat the details as a starting point, not gospel.

How it was placed

Iowa DNR public ArcGIS, Boundaries/Public_Lands/MapServer/0 (programs.iowadnr.gov), TYPE=State Wildlife Management Area, MANAGER='DNR - Wildlife', all 4 parcel(s) OWNER='DNR'; outSR=4326, fetched 2026-07-20. Coordinate = centroid (verified inside boundary) of the largest parcel, so it is inside the official boundary. Independently cross-checked against OpenStreetMap/Overpass: matched 'Waterloo Creek Wildlife Management Area' at 0.6 mi. Camping basis: Iowa Admin. Code r. 571-51.11(481A) (IAC 5/14/25, ARC 9226C, eff. 6/18/25) — primitive camping allowed on all game management areas, 14 consecutive days, unless posted; r. 571-51.2 puts all DNR land in that class. No per-area camping flag exists in the GIS, so this is a category-wide rule applied to a verified DNR-owned unit → confidence='med'. Corps/USFWS-owned units excluded on purpose. Batch 1 (top 50 by acreage) of 396 qualifying areas.

EV chargers

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.

Field check

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.

What we don’t know about Waterloo Creek WMA

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
Seasonal & winter access
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

Before you go — Waterloo Creek WMA

Finding water out here →Stay limits →Your first dispersed night →Power off-grid →All field notes →

Is this page wrong about Waterloo Creek WMA?

This page was built from a public land record, not from a visit. If you have actually pulled in here and it does not match, that is worth more than anything we can read off a map. Tell Dave what is off — it goes to him, not onto the page.

Anything else, in your own words (optional)Your email — optional, and only so Dave can ask you a follow-up. It does not go on a list, and nobody is promising you a reply.

A reader report is not a fact, and this one will not change a word of this page by itself. Dave reads it and checks it against the agency’s own record, because that record is what this site says. If reader reports are ever shown here they are labelled “reader report, unverified” with the date, and they are never merged into the agency fields.