By Tony Barthel
If you’re looking to stay in places without paying site fees, get out your solar system and fill your fresh tanks and download US Public Lands. This is a map app from our friends at Technomadia that shows you the boundaries of Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, National Monuments, Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, Tennessee Valley Authority, Department of Defense and other federal public lands.
Each of these categories is selectable, so if you’re specifically or only looking for Bureau of Land Management lands, you can find them with this. As with any map-based system, there is the option of satellite, standard or what they refer to as “basic” illustrations. As usual, you can pinch and zoom easily and quickly and, of course, the app knows where you are based on the smartphone’s GPS system.
You can use the app’s layers icon to select which agencies you want displayed to create a map that suits your travels.
Since it’s conceivable that you’re going to be traveling where the internet isn’t coming along with you, the system does store the maps and layers on the device although having GPS and a cell signal connection makes the app better.
One of the nifty aspects of this app is that you can specifically find places and then drop a pin to remember and find it later. So, if you’re looking for Joshua Tree in Southern California, for example, you could drop a pin there.
Believe it or not, the U.S. Federal Government owns nearly 650 million acres of land – which represents almost a third of the country. These are lands held for use by all Americans.
The goal of the app is to be able to find the boundaries of these lands. One warning, though: Sometimes there are private lands contained within the boundaries of public lands so it’s wise to fully do your research before setting up camp in a spot.
Also, this app does not work with your GPS so while it will help you find and will illustrate the boundaries of public lands, that doesn’t help you to navigate to those places.
To see how useful this app is, we suggest you watch the Video Demo at US Public Lands.
RVT978
I may download this a backup/second opinion, but for general use in finding public lands AND your location relative to them, I highly recommend the GAIA GPS app. Not free, and worth it.
Love this app