BLM Land Access Rules — Where You Can (and Can’t) Camp in the Mojave Corridor

Most of the open desert around the Mojave corridor is public land — but “public” doesn’t mean the same rules apply everywhere. BLM land access rules are different from what governs a national preserve, a national park, or state trust land, and mixing them up is the fastest way to end up camped somewhere you’re not actually supposed to be, or paying a fee you didn’t need to pay.

Here’s how to tell what you’re standing on and what that actually means for where you can camp.

Who Actually Manages the Land You’re On

Four agencies cover most of the public land in the Mojave corridor, and each one runs on different rules. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages the largest share and is generally the most permissive for dispersed camping. The National Park Service (NPS) manages national parks and preserves — Death Valley, Mojave National Preserve, Joshua Tree — with more structure: designated campgrounds, backcountry permits in some areas, specific camping zones.

The Forest Service manages higher-elevation land at the edges of the corridor, mostly outside the low desert itself. And state trust land, which shows up more in Arizona than Nevada, is a category a lot of overlanders don’t know exists until they’re camped on it without a permit.

Mojave National Preserve — the Entrance Fee Myth

This one trips people up constantly: Mojave National Preserve has no entrance fee. None. If you’ve been holding off on a trip because you assumed it’d cost like a national park, that assumption is wrong. What does cost money are the three developed campgrounds — Hole-in-the-Wall runs $25/night, Mid Hills runs $20/night, and the Black Canyon Group and Equestrian Campground runs $50/night. All three are reservable up to six months out, and same-day reservations are available too.

If you’d rather skip the fee entirely, dispersed camping along Kelbaker Road is free and doesn’t require a permit for camping or hiking. The rules are straightforward: backpackers on foot need to camp at least half a mile from any developed area or road, and at least 200 yards from water sources. That’s a genuinely good option if you want the Preserve’s terrain without the campground price tag or reservation hassle.

BLM Land Access Rules — the Most Permissive Category, With Real Limits

BLM land is where most dispersed camping in the corridor actually happens, and it’s the most permissive of the categories here — but “permissive” isn’t “no rules.” The mechanics (the 200-foot buffer from water and roads, the 14-day stay limit, how to identify a legal route using a Motor Vehicle Use Map) are covered in full in our Leave No Trace for Overlanding piece, so we won’t repeat all of it here. What matters for this piece is the access question: is the BLM parcel you’re looking at actually open, or does it fall inside a designation that changes the rules? That’s the part most guides skip.

For finding and confirming routes and legal boundaries before you go, our guide to the map tools we actually use covers OnX Offroad, BLM’s own GIS layers, and the other sources worth checking. Combine that with the designation check below and you’ve got the full picture on BLM land access rules before you leave the driveway.

When “Public Land” Isn’t Fully Open — ACEC, WSA, and NCA

Not all BLM land carries the same access rules, and three designations account for most of the exceptions you’ll run into in the Southwest:

• ACEC (Area of Critical Environmental Concern) — designated to protect specific historic, cultural, scenic, or wildlife values. Some ACECs restrict vehicle travel to designated routes only, or close camping within a certain distance of the protected resource. The restrictions vary by ACEC, so the designation alone doesn’t tell you the rule — you have to check the specific management plan.
• WSA (Wilderness Study Area) — land being evaluated for permanent wilderness designation. WSAs are managed to preserve their undeveloped character in the meantime, which generally means no motorized or mechanized travel at all, including bicycles. If a route runs into a WSA boundary, that’s where it ends for a vehicle.
• NCA (National Conservation Area) — combines conservation with public recreation and resource use, so NCAs are usually more open than ACECs or WSAs, but individual NCAs can still carry their own specific rules on top of standard BLM regulations.

Arizona’s Curveball — State Trust Land

This is the one that catches people crossing from Nevada into the Arizona side of the corridor: Arizona State Trust Land is not public land in the BLM sense, even though it often looks and feels identical from a dirt road. Camping or hiking on Arizona State Trust Land legally requires an Individual Recreational Permit, which costs a small annual fee and covers you across all state trust parcels statewide.

Nevada has some state trust land too, but far less of it intersects with typical overlanding routes than in Arizona, where trust parcels are checkerboarded throughout BLM land in a way that isn’t obvious on the ground.

The practical problem is that the transition from BLM to state trust land usually isn’t marked. There’s no fence, no sign, nothing that visually distinguishes the two. The only reliable way to know is checking a land ownership layer — OnX Offroad includes one — before you set up camp anywhere near the Arizona portions of the corridor.

The Five-Minute Check Before You Go

Getting the BLM land access rules right — along with NPS and state trust rules — comes down to five checks:

1. Confirm the land manager for your route — BLM, NPS, Forest Service, or state trust — using a land ownership map layer, not assumption.
2. Check for ACEC, WSA, or NCA overlays along the route and verify any restrictions if one applies.
3. If you’re crossing into Arizona, confirm whether any planned campsite falls on state trust land and get the permit if so.
4. Check current fire restrictions for the district you’re headed into — these change with conditions, not on a fixed schedule.
5. If you’re heading to a developed campground (Mojave National Preserve or similar), confirm current fees and grab a reservation if the site requires one.

One more thing worth hammering home: land designations aren’t permanent. Federal land management priorities shift with each administration, and ACEC, WSA, and NCA boundaries — along with the restrictions attached to them — get expanded, redrawn, and occasionally rolled back on a timeline that has nothing to do with your trip planning. A parcel that was wide open last season can require a permit or fall under new travel restrictions this season, with no sign posted anywhere to tell you that changed. “I didn’t know the rules changed” doesn’t hold up if a ranger or land manager cites you — ignorance of a current regulation isn’t a legal defense on public land any more than it is anywhere else. Treat a designation check as something you redo before every trip, not something you did once and filed away.

The access we have now exists because enough people before us bothered to check the rules instead of assuming. That’s a five-minute habit, not a burden.

Most of the trips we run cross land managed by several different agencies in a single day, and the requirements change with the boundary — that’s the whole point of everything above. It doesn’t take much effort to learn the do’s and don’ts for wherever you’re headed, and once you know them, using public land gets a lot simpler instead of more complicated.

Group size is one of the first things worth checking. Some land requires a permit once a group grows past a handful of people. When we ran White Rim Trail in Canyonlands, a group permit was required, and the rules that come with it — spacing between vehicles, assigned campsites — aren’t suggestions.

A ranger patrolled our group, checked our permit paperwork, and cited most of the vehicles for a safety concern over how close together we were running. We hadn’t broken any rule we knew about, but the ranger wanted more distance between vehicles than we’d left, so we spread out and complied. Campsites on White Rim aren’t first-come-first-served either — they’re reserved to your permitted group specifically, assigned in advance.

Compare that to running up Caruthers Canyon in the New York Mountains solo or with a rig or two for a night — no permit required, no group-size threshold to think about. Stop, camp, enjoy. And sometimes the easiest option is neither of those: after a long road grind, dropping into a national or state park campground late at night and paying for a spot beats hunting for a dispersed site in the dark. Those campgrounds tend to sit at the end of a long gravel road and run mostly empty, so finding an open space after hours is rarely a problem.

The more of these destinations you run, the faster BLM land access rules — NPS, state trust, all of it — become second nature to read before you leave the driveway: permit or no permit, reservation or first-come, six people or two.