American Adventurer
Camps › By state › New York

Free and paid camping in New York

1,381 camps in New York: 1,378 free, 3 charge a fee. Every camp that charges is marked fee in the list below — or press Free only to hide them.

New York is a state-land state, and that sets everything below it. Of the 1,381 camps we have found here, 1,365 sit on land the state Department of Environmental Conservation manages — Forest Preserve in the Adirondacks and the Catskills, plus state forests outside the Preserve. Federal ground barely registers. The only national forest in New York is the 16,000-acre Finger Lakes, on the ridge between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes, run as one unit with the Green Mountain over in Vermont, and it holds 7 of the camps on this page. Everything that follows is DEC's rulebook; that handful of Forest Service sites runs on the forest's rules instead. One agency, not six, is why this page carries one heading where a western state has a dozen — the unit you actually navigate by is inside the site's own name: Saranac Lakes Wild Forest, Wilcox Lake Wild Forest, Independence River Wild Forest, Five Ponds Wilderness, and in the Catskills the Slide Mountain Wilderness. Saranac Lakes alone accounts for 161 of them. Most of what is listed below is a DEC-designated primitive tent site, and DEC marks those with a yellow and black "Camp Here" disk.

The rulebook is short and it is mostly statewide, which is not how the West works. Camping is prohibited within 150 feet of any road, trail, spring, stream, pond or other water — except at a site DEC has designated with that disk, and at those you camp on the disk and the 150-foot rule is already solved for you. The stay limit is the part that will catch you. More than three nights in one place, or a group of ten or more, needs a permit from a DEC Forest Ranger. It is free and it is a phone call. But the default here is three nights, not fourteen.

Camping on the Forest Preserve is legal year round. Access is what has a season. Most of these sites are reached by a seasonal access road, and DEC's own phrasing for those is that they are maintained through the big game hunting season but not through the winter — the Northern Zone's regular firearms season runs 44 days from the second Saturday after Columbus Day, so that is roughly late October into the first week of December. At the other end, DEC's backcountry page has the seasonal roads in the West Canada Lake country "expected to open in mid-May." What sits between is mud season, and it is worse than it sounds: DEC asks hikers to stay off trails above 2,500 feet until they have dried, an advisory that regularly runs into June, and describes ice, thick mud, flooded ground and deep slushy snow up high while the valley below is green. Treat mid-May through late fall as the drive-in season, and check the unit's own page for the gate before you commit to the drive.

Four things here will not match the habits you brought with you. First, elevation is a legal line, not just weather. Camping is prohibited above 4,000 feet in the Adirondacks and above 3,500 feet in the Catskills, the Catskill ceiling lifting only between December 21 and March 21, and fires are barred above those same lines except in an emergency. It rarely bites on this page — 98% of the New York camps we have an elevation for sit below 2,500 feet, and the median is 1,637 feet. Second, campfires are normal here, which will surprise anyone used to a western August: dead and downed wood only, never a standing tree, never where a "No Fires" disk is posted, and never in the Eastern Zone of the High Peaks, where they are banned outright. New York's statewide brush-burning ban from March 16 to May 14 does not touch a campfire — a fire under 3 feet high and 4 feet across, burning clean untreated wood or charcoal, stays legal straight through it. Third, bears are one order, not a statewide one: overnight campers in the Eastern High Peaks Wilderness must use a bear-resistant canister from April 1 through November 30, and DEC is explicit that a sack or a hang does not count. Everywhere else the food discipline is on you, not on a rule. Fourth, the water is not drinking water. DEC's instruction is plain: do not drink from a pond or stream unless you have boiled, filtered or treated it. Bury waste 6 to 8 inches deep and 150 feet from water and campsites, and keep soap that same 150 feet back. Expect company — DEC flags ticks as active in the Adirondack backcountry, and Cornell's state IPM program puts black flies in spring, hatched out of clean running water and aimed at your head.

If you have not done this before, start in the Moose River Plains Complex. DEC keeps 116 primitive roadside campsites there, along the Limekiln Lake-Cedar River Road, Otter Brook Road, Rock Dam Road and the spurs off them — free, first come, and not reservable. That road is a 23-mile seasonal route with a gate at each end, the Limekiln Gate near Inlet in the west and the Wakely Dam Gate near Indian Lake in the east, and in winter it is a snowmobile route. You drive to the site, the disk settles where you pitch, and if you are under three nights and under ten people you need no permit at all. Read the unit page the week you go: in August 2026 a bridge failure at Payne Brook had the eastern segment closed and campsites 1 through 20 with it, which is exactly the kind of thing that changes here. If you would rather be on water, Saranac Lakes Wild Forest has roadside sites on Floodwood Road and at Little Green Pond and a great many more that can only be reached by boat. Either way, expect a fire ring and nothing else: no water, no toilet, no trash can. Sign the trail register on your way in.

See all 1,381 on the map →

Showing 400 of 1,381. New York has more camps than fit on one page, so these are the ones we know most about first — of the 400 listed here, 400 are free and 0 charge a fee. The remaining 981 are all on the map.

How high, and when it opens

Elevation decides the season out here. Pick a band to filter the list.

New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation399 camps

Elsewhere in New York1 camps