Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest
Where the camps cluster
The place
The Nez Perce-Clearwater sits in north-central Idaho, right up against the Montana border along the crest of the Bitterroot Mountains. It is really two forests -- the Nez Perce and the Clearwater -- managed as a single unit since an administrative combination around 2012, and together they cover roughly four million acres. This is steep, deep, hard country: timbered canyons, wild rivers, and enormous stretches of roadless wilderness where you can walk for days without crossing a road. It is the homeland of the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) people, and it holds one of the most storied pieces of ground in the American West -- the Lolo Trail, where Lewis and Clark nearly starved crossing the mountains in 1805.
History
The name honors the Nimiipuu, the people history calls the Nez Perce, whose traditional homeland this country is; 'Clearwater' is the river and the land the other half of the forest is named for. The Lolo Trail across these mountains was an ancient Indigenous travel and trade route long before any wagon or explorer used it. In 1805 the Corps of Discovery -- Lewis and Clark -- crossed the Bitterroots on that trail in early snow, cold and out of food, and came down half-starved onto the Weippe Prairie, where the Nez Perce fed them and helped them build canoes to continue west. Relations were not always so kind: in 1877 the Nez Perce War broke out in this landscape, with the opening fight at White Bird Canyon and battles along the Clearwater, before Chief Joseph and his people began their long flight back over the Lolo Trail and across Montana toward Canada. The two national forests that make up the unit today were joined under a single administration around 2012.
Wildlife & plants
This is famous elk country -- the Clearwater and its high timbered ridges have drawn elk hunters for generations. You will also find moose, mule and white-tailed deer, mountain goats on the high rock, black bears in good numbers, and mountain lions. Gray wolves range across this landscape now; they were reintroduced to central Idaho's Frank Church wilderness country in 1995 and 1996 and spread out from there, and the Nez Perce Tribe went on to lead much of Idaho's wolf recovery work. In the rivers are two of the great travelers of the fish world: wild steelhead and Chinook salmon that leave the Pacific and climb hundreds of miles up the Columbia, Snake, and Clearwater -- often 500 to 800 miles inland -- to spawn in these headwaters, among the longest such runs left in the contiguous United States. Native westslope cutthroat and bull trout live in the colder tributaries.
Notable features
The forest's crown jewels are its wilderness areas: much of the Selway-Bitterroot along the Montana line, part of the Frank Church-River of No Return (the biggest unbroken wilderness in the lower 48), and the Gospel-Hump Wilderness on the Nez Perce side. The Lochsa, Selway, and Middle Fork Clearwater rivers are legendary for whitewater and for wild fish. U.S. Highway 12 -- the Northwest Passage Scenic Byway, still called the Lewis and Clark Highway by locals -- follows the Lochsa through the heart of the forest, one of the great drives in the West. High above it runs the Lolo Motorway (Forest Road 500), a rough, seasonal, high-clearance track that traces the ancient Nez Perce and Lewis and Clark route along the ridgetops. Tucked along Highway 12 is the DeVoto Memorial Cedar Grove of ancient redcedar, and buried deep in the Selway-Bitterroot is Moose Creek, a fly-in backcountry ranger station reached only by air or a long walk.
Camps are sourced from public U.S. Forest Service recreation data and have not been personally visited. Roads shown are Forest Service passenger-car routes (maintenance level 3–5) and may be seasonal or gated. Always confirm access, fees and fire rules with the ranger district before you go. Found a fee where we show free? Tell us on the contact page.