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Free and paid camping in Montana

4,668 camps in Montana: 4,515 free, 153 charge a fee. Every camp that charges is marked fee in the list below — or press Free only to hide them.

Almost all of this is national forest. Of the 4,668 camps on this page, all but 62 sit on Forest Service ground — the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Helena-Lewis and Clark, Custer Gallatin, Kootenai, Flathead, Lolo and Bitterroot carry nearly every one of them. The remainder is a scattering of BLM, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, Bureau of Reclamation and city ground. That is worth knowing up front, because the forest sets your stay limit and your fire rules, and the forests do not agree with each other.

The season is shorter than the map suggests, and snow sets it, not the calendar. The Flathead gives its main camping season as Memorial Day through Labor Day. High country runs later. The Park Service has logged the opening of the road over Logan Pass, in Glacier, every year since 1933: there is no set date, the earliest it ever opened was May 16 and the latest was July 13, and since 1992 it has closed to vehicles on the third Monday in October. That is a road with a plow crew on it. Your forest road has nobody. It opens when it melts and dries out, which can be weeks after the valley below it has gone green. Forests also gate roads on purpose — the Helena-Lewis and Clark closes roads in the Elkhorn Mountains between fall and spring to protect elk. Pull the forest's Motor Vehicle Use Map before you commit to a road, not after.

Montana's stay limit is sixteen days, not fourteen. The national default you have read everywhere else is BLM's: dispersed camping "generally limited to 14 days within any 28-day period." Montana is the exception on both sides of the fence. BLM's Montana-Dakotas office says there are no long-term camping areas in the state and "the maximum stay is 16 days." The Flathead's maximum stay is 16 days, and it adds that some campgrounds are shorter. The Custer Gallatin prohibits more than 16 consecutive days in one site and more than 32 cumulative days in a calendar year. Then step onto Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks land and the number drops to 7 nights in any 30-day period. Read the unit heading, not the state.

Two things here will not be habits you brought with you. The first is that bears are paperwork, not just wildlife. Much of western and central Montana sits under a mandatory food storage order with dates on it — the Custer Gallatin's runs March 1 to December 1 every year across five ranger districts, and it covers trash, hygiene products and empty containers, not only food. You comply with a certified bear-resistant container, a closed hard-sided vehicle or trailer, food hung at least 10 feet up and 4 feet out from the trunk, or food attended by somebody awake and within 100 feet. The Flathead runs its own order over dispersed sites. Grizzlies are out roughly March through November and their range is expanding into country they have not used in decades, so "this was never grizzly country" is not something you can act on. The second is fire. Restrictions arrive by county and by area rather than statewide, agreed jointly by the forests, BLM, the state and the counties, and neighboring counties enter them on different dates. Stage 1 generally means no campfire outside a developed recreation site and no smoking outside a vehicle. Both the Lolo and the Bitterroot send the public to mtfireinfo.org for what is in force today; check it the morning you leave.

If you have not done this before, start on the Helena-Lewis and Clark. It states its rules in plain language on one page: camp anywhere not posted closed, not where overnight parking is banned, and not within 200 feet of a developed road, trail, campground, picnic area or trailhead. Expect no toilet, no table, no trash can, no fire grate and no treated water. Carry what you will drink or plan to filter it, bury waste 6 to 8 inches deep and at least 100 feet from any water, and keep washing and your fire that same 100 feet back. That is the arrangement on most of the rest of this page too.

See all 4,668 on the map →

Showing 400 of 4,668. Montana has more camps than fit on one page, so these are the ones we know most about first — of the 400 listed here, 397 are free and 3 charge a fee. The remaining 4,268 are all on the map.