Willow Lake WMA (Rolette County)

North Dakota Game & Fish (wildlife management areas)

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

Free primitive camping authorised by BINDING RULE, not by a listing: NDAC 30-04-02-01 & -11 (ndlegis.gov/information/acdata/pdf/30-04-02.pdf) + gf.nd.gov/wma (WMA Regulations, last updated August 2026). Both sources were downloaded and read in full on 2026-08-16 (this fire), not inherited from an earlier fire's notes. 30-04-02-01 grants open public use with no licence/pass/entrance-fee precondition; 30-04-02-11 (amended eff. 2024-04-01) permits camping up to 10 consecutive days, bans leaving equipment set up when not in use, bans mowing for campsites, and creates NO camping fee -- every dollar figure in the chapter (50/100/250) is a noncriminal-offence penalty, see 30-04-02-19. gf.nd.gov/wma (last updated August 2026) states 'Most WMAs are ideal for nature study, hiking and primitive camping'; its camping-prohibited and Thursday-Monday-only WMA lists were downloaded raw and string-matched locally, never via a search summary. STAY LIMIT 10 consecutive days. SEASONAL: no seasonal closure is published for WMA camping, but access trails are unplowed and gumbo when wet. FIRE: campfires are allowed and downed wood may be gathered, subject to any county burn ban in force -- check before you light one. Boundary/acreage/county from the ND state ArcGIS Wildlife_Management_Areas layer (gis.dmr.nd.gov/dmrpublicservices/rest/services/OilGasPublicMapDataVectorTiles/Wildlife_Management_Areas/FeatureServer/0), re-pulled live this fire: 602 ac, 2 parcel(s), largest parcel used. Coordinate: representative interior point (centroid), asserted point-in-polygon against the unit boundary, WGS84. NOT a surveyed campsite. CONFIDENCE 'med' NOT 'high' for one reason only -- unit size. The legal basis is identical to the larger units, but at 602 ac this may be all wetland or tree belt with no drivable, campable ground; we have not ground-truthed it. WATER: not recorded -- there is no stated potable supply on these units and any surface water present must not be assumed drinkable. NEAREST TOWN: not determined this fire. Ingest 2026-08-16 08:46:47 (fire 790, ND thin-state fill). --- REVIEW 2026-08-19 (fire 1100, ND backlog pass 2, reviewer nightshift-verified) --- Re-fetched and re-read IN FULL this fire (nothing inherited from the pass-1 notes): NDAC ch. 30-04-02 (ndlegis.gov/information/acdata/pdf/30-04-02.pdf, 8 pp) -- 30-04-02-01 opens every WMA to 'public hunting, fishing, and trapping, or other compatible public use' with no licence/pass/entrance-fee precondition; 30-04-02-11 (amended eff. 2024-04-01) allows camping up to 10 consecutive days, bans leaving equipment set up when not in use, bans mowing for campsites, prohibits camping only where POSTED at public road entry points, and creates no camping fee; 30-04-02-03 restricts motor vehicles to constructed roads, established trails and parking areas normally used by passenger cars; 30-04-02-19 confirms the 50/100/250 dollar figures are noncriminal-offence penalties, not fees. gf.nd.gov/wma (WMA Regulations) still reads 'Most WMAs are ideal for nature study, hiking and primitive camping' and 'Gathering of downed wood for campfires is permitted', and carries the department phone 701-328-6300. BOTH restriction lists were parsed out of the raw page this fire -- overnight-camping-prohibited (15 units) and closed-Tuesday-and-Wednesday (20 units) -- and THIS UNIT IS ON NEITHER; the per-unit camping sentences on gf.nd.gov/wma-listing (35 units carry one) were parsed separately and this unit carries none. LISTING: gf.nd.gov/wma-listing (243 unit records parsed this fire) carries this unit at 602 ac with directions '9 miles north, 3 miles west of Dunseith.'. BOUNDARY: ND DMR ArcGIS Wildlife_Management_Areas layer re-pulled live this fire (374 polygons); the unit is present and the stored coordinate asserts point-in-polygon INSIDE it (confirmed). ACCESS: ROAD_PROXIMITY_ND_ALL.md flagged this row as far from a road at 787.1 m -- but that is measured from the polygon's representative interior point, so on a half-section block it measures the unit's width, not its reachability. Re-measured this fire from the UNIT BOUNDARY (one Overpass union query): the nearest drivable way is 1.3 m from the boundary (State Highway 43 (secondary)) and a drivable way has a node inside the polygon. In ND the section-line road and the WMA boundary usually coincide, so read this as EDGE access -- pull off the boundary road and walk in; it is not evidence of a graded interior road. The coordinate is not bad. DUPLICATE CHECK (coordinates, never names): no published or approved ND camp lies within 0.62 mi of this coordinate, and no published/approved/later ND coordinate falls inside this unit's polygon. Not a duplicate. WATER: unchanged -- no potable supply is claimed and surface water is not assumed drinkable. CONFIDENCE: 'med' normalised to 'medium' (same meaning, two spellings were in use). DECISION: APPROVED -- legal basis, unit listing, boundary and coordinate all re-confirmed against the agency's own sources this fire; on neither camping-restriction list.

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.