Overland Builders, Mechanics and 4x4 Shops in Illinois

Why Illinois is a driving state with almost no public land, and how to use the little there is

Federal agencies manage 414,772 acres in Illinois, 1.2 percent of the state, and the Bureau of Land Management holds twenty of them. The Forest Service has 304,723 acres, nearly all of it the Shawnee National Forest in the far south. The Fish and Wildlife Service has 90,726, the Department of Defense 19,264, and the National Park Service thirty-nine, because its Illinois units are houses and town blocks rather than landscapes. Across the whole state our build of the federal recreation database finds 24 federal campgrounds a vehicle can drive to, and 23 of them belong to the Army Corps of Engineers.

Acres of federal land 1: 414,772; 1.2 percent of Illinois. The BLM holds 20 acres and the national route layer records no BLM routes at all, so no BLM mileage appears on this page
Of Illinois is privately owned 25: 97%; The Department of Natural Resources’s own figure. It also ranks the state 46th in the nation for publicly owned land
Acres in the Shawnee National Forest 5: 289,000; The forest’s home page figure. Its About the Area page says 280,000 and the CRS counts 304,723 Forest Service acres statewide. All three are published
Federal campgrounds a vehicle can reach 2: 24; 23 on Army Corps of Engineers water and one in the Shawnee. 22 of them take reservations
Widest machine Illinois lets on an OHV trail 20: 64 in; A recreational off-highway vehicle under 625 ILCS 5/1-168.8. The other two types are a 50-inch ATV and an off-highway motorcycle
Weight limit on a state natural resources road 18: 20,000 lb; Ten tons of vehicle and contents together, unless a sign says otherwise, under 17 Ill. Adm. Code 110.160(g)
Charles Mound, the highest point in Illinois 3: 1,235 ft; Jo Daviess County. Our own 3DEP reading at the USGS point is 1,234 feet. The low point is 279 feet where the Ohio joins the Mississippi at Cairo, a Corps of Engineers figure in the USGS table
Yearly rain in southern Illinois 28: 48 in; Against under 32 inches in the north. Snow runs the other way, 36 inches a year up north and under 10 in the far south