Fire restrictions on BLM land in eastern Colorado came down a step on August 18, and a campfire at a dispersed site is still prohibited. The Bureau of Land Management’s Rocky Mountain District reduced restrictions from Stage 2 to Stage 1 across the Royal Gorge and San Luis Valley field offices, effective August 18, 2026, in an announcement published that day.
Here is the sentence that decides your evening: “Under Stage 1 fire restrictions, campfires are allowed only in agency-provided fire grates at developed recreation sites.”
Agency-provided grate. Developed recreation site. If you are camped down a two-track next to a ring of rocks somebody stacked three seasons ago, neither of those describes where you are.
What Stage 1 gives back
The announcement lists the rest of it. Smoking is restricted to enclosed vehicles or buildings, developed recreation sites, or areas cleared of flammable materials. Chainsaws, welding and torches must meet specific fire-safety requirements. Exploding targets stay prohibited.
Underneath those sit the year-round rules the announcement repeats: no unattended or unextinguished fires, no fireworks, no incendiary or tracer ammunition, no burning hazardous or explosive materials, and no operating off-road vehicles without required spark arresters.
So the change for a camper is narrower than “restrictions eased” sounds. Chainsaw work comes back under conditions. The campfire does not.
What the announcement leaves open
It says nothing about camp stoves. Not permitted, not restricted, not mentioned. We are not going to fill that gap in for you, because the answer lives in the signed order and what we have is the agency’s summary of it. Call the Royal Gorge Field Office before you plan on cooking with a flame.
It also covers BLM ground and only BLM ground. A district boundary is not a forest boundary, a county line, or a state park gate, and Colorado dispersed camping crosses between BLM and Forest Service land constantly. Each agency signs its own order. Driving over a cattle guard can change your fire rules without anything looking different out the window.
What to do this week
Check the BLM Colorado fire restrictions page before you build anything. Read on August 19, 2026, that page publishes no single statewide stage. It splits the state into four interagency fire management districts, routes you to each district’s own listing, and points at the national fire restrictions dashboard. Look up the district you will actually be in, not the state.
Then read the sign at the site. Restrictions move in both directions and sometimes within a week, and the posted order plus the field office’s current word beat any website, this one included.
Our Colorado free camping page covers how the state’s public land is split up, and our fire restrictions guide covers how the stages are structured and where to find the order behind them.