Colorado's BLM camping limit is 14 days in 30, then 30 air miles

On BLM land in Colorado the limit is 14 days in any 30-day period at one location, and once you hit it you have to move at least 30 air miles. Not 14 in 28. Not “about 25 miles.” Colorado replaced both numbers statewide in 2010, and the difference is big enough to change where you sleep next.

The BLM’s Colorado camping and occupancy fact sheet, released January 28, 2025 by the Grand Junction Field Office and checked August 11, 2026, carries it in two lines:

• “You must not camp longer than 14 days in any 30-day period, at any one location, including any campground on public land.”
• “After the 14 days have been reached, you must move at least 30 air miles away from the previously occupied location.”

Set that beside the BLM’s national camping page, checked the same day: dispersed camping is “generally limited to 14 days within any 28-day period,” then a move “often at least 25 to 30 miles away.” Generally. Often. Those two hedges are doing real work, and Colorado is where they come apart.

Where the rule comes from

Colorado’s version is a supplementary rule, published at 75 FR 32968 on June 10, 2010 and effective July 12, 2010 (checked August 11, 2026). The BLM wrote it to close a residency loophole in the 1990 rules, which required only a seven-day absence or a move of three miles.

The notice is blunt about its reach: “These supplementary rules apply to all public lands in Colorado.” It is equally blunt about the floor. “Individual field offices may issue separate regulations relating to camping and occupancy that are more, but not less, restrictive.” A field office can tighten it. None can loosen it.

Air miles are the part that bites

Air miles are straight-line miles. Thirty of them on a map is not thirty on the odometer. Move 30 air miles off the Grand Mesa or out of the San Juans and the drive can easily be double that, around a range and back up a different drainage.

Measure it the way the rule does. Draw a straight line from the site you left. If the new spot falls inside that circle it does not count, however long the drive was.

Three more lines from the same fact sheet

• Unattended personal property cannot sit in a campground, a designated recreation area, or on any other public land for more than 48 hours.
• Residency is out. Camping “is for recreational purposes only.”
• In a fee area you register, if required, and pay within 30 minutes of entering it.

The fact sheet also defines camping to include “parking of a motor vehicle, motor home or trailer” for the apparent purpose of overnight occupancy during recreation. Sleeping in the vehicle is camping here. The clock runs the same way.

What to do

Pick your next site before you set up the first one, and check it clears 30 air miles. Then read the field office page for the ground you are on, because the stay can be shorter than 14 days. None of this reaches the national forests, which sit outside this rule entirely and set their limits through their own orders. Our Colorado free camping page lists what each agency publishes in the state. For the national default and why it is only a default, see the BLM 14-day rule.

And the standing caveat: a posted sign or a current order at the site beats any web page, this one included.