Download the Camprtron Camping Dataset

Camprtron publishes dispersed and developed camping across 50 states across the Mountain West, New England, Texas, the Pacific Northwest, California, the Great Plains, the Mid-Atlantic North, the Northwoods, the Ozarks, Appalachia North, Appalachia South, the Gulf South, the Ohio Valley, Alaska, and Hawaii, built from public-domain government sources. This page is that data, free to download and free to reuse, as CSV or JSON.

The data is released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. You may copy it, change it, and use it commercially. The one condition is that you credit Camprtron and link back.

Plain text:

Inglehoff LLC. Camprtron Public Camping Dataset (version 1.0). https://camprtron.com/data/download. Licensed CC BY 4.0. Accessed <date>.

BibTeX:

@misc{camprtron_camping_dataset,
  author       = {{Inglehoff LLC}},
  title        = {Camprtron Public Camping Dataset},
  version      = {1.0},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://camprtron.com/data/download}},
  note         = {Licensed CC BY 4.0. Accessed <date>.}
}

Replace <date> with the date you downloaded the file. The JSON form carries the same licence and attribution inside the file, so a copy that travels keeps its provenance.

One row per published camping site: name, area and county, camp type, access-road type, whether it is free, whether it is reservable, an authored description, the nearest town and distance to it, approximate coordinates, and the facility amenities we hold.

Three things are deliberately not in it, and asking will not change them:

• Exact coordinates. Latitude and longitude are rounded to two decimals, about one kilometre. That is enough to map, group or cite a site, and not enough to navigate to one. The rounding is the product boundary.
• Live availability and reservations. Availability changes by the hour, so any copy of it is wrong by the time it is read.
• Vehicle suitability verdicts and trip rankings. These are computed for a specific rig on a specific trip, so they describe a search, not a campsite.

Two caveats worth stating plainly. The nearest town is chosen by straight-line distance, so it can be wrong where a cliff or a water gap sits between the two. And a description is present only where the underlying agency published enough source text to write one from, so many rows have none.

A campsite in this file is not a promise that camping there is currently legal. Forest orders close dispersed camping on specific districts, they expire, and they get reissued. We track those separately, and that tracker is the thing to read before a trip: where dispersed camping is restricted or banned.

Downloads are per state. There is no single combined file: the whole dataset is six figures of rows, and a per-state extract is both faster for you and the ordinary shape for public-land data. To take everything, loop the links below.

Can I use this data in a commercial product?

Yes. The dataset is licensed CC BY 4.0, which permits commercial use, redistribution and modification. The only condition is attribution: credit Camprtron and link back to camprtron.com. There is no fee, no application and no separate commercial licence.

How do I credit Camprtron?

Name Camprtron as the source and link to https://camprtron.com/data/download. A full citation, in plain text and BibTeX, is on that page. The JSON download also carries the licence and attribution string inside the file, so the credit travels with a copy.

Why are the coordinates only approximate?

Latitude and longitude are rounded to two decimal places, roughly one kilometre. That is a deliberate boundary rather than a limit of the data: it is enough to map a site, group sites by area, or cite one, and not enough to navigate to a specific undeveloped campsite. Exact coordinates stay in the Camprtron app.

Why is there no single file containing every state?

Downloads are per state because the full dataset runs to six figures of rows, and serving it in one request would be slow for the reader and hard on the database the rest of the site shares. Per-jurisdiction extracts are also the ordinary shape for public-land data. To take everything, request each published state in turn.

What does an empty amenity value mean?

Unknown, not absent. Amenity fields are three-state: true means the amenity is present, false means the source explicitly recorded it as absent, and an empty value means no source recorded it either way. Treating empty as false would assert something the underlying agency data does not say.

Does this tell me whether camping at a site is legal right now?

No. A row in the dataset describes a campsite, not its current legal status. Forest orders restrict dispersed camping on specific districts, they expire, and they are reissued. Camprtron tracks those separately at camprtron.com/guides/where-dispersed-camping-is-restricted-or-banned, and that is the page to check before a trip.

Why do many sites have no description?

A description is written only where the managing agency published enough source text to work from. Federal recreation.gov records often carry that text; most state and locally sourced records do not. Rather than invent prose for a site nobody described, the field is left empty. It is a gap in the government source, not an omission.

How often does the data change?

The underlying data is refreshed when Camprtron republishes, which happens at most a few times a week and often less. Downloads are cached for a day. For reproducible work, record the date you downloaded the file, which is what the citation block asks for.

Where does the data come from?

Public-domain United States government sources: Forest Service Motor Vehicle Use Maps, the federal Recreation Information Database (recreation.gov), Bureau of Land Management and PAD-US land ownership, USGS hydrography and structures, state agency open GIS, and OpenStreetMap. The full method is at camprtron.com/data/methodology.

Every row traces back to public-domain government data: USFS Motor Vehicle Use Maps, the federal RIDB recreation database, BLM and PAD-US land ownership, USGS hydrography and structures, state agency open GIS, and OpenStreetMap. The full method, including what is thin or missing, is on the methodology page, and the per-state record counts are on the coverage page.