The honest arithmetic of public land here
The Congressional Research Service counts 414,772 federal acres out of 35,795,200 in Illinois, which is 1.2 percent. Forest Service 304,723, Fish and Wildlife Service 90,726, Defense 19,264, National Park Service 39, Bureau of Land Management 20. The BLM row is effectively a rounding error, and the national layer this site uses for motorized route mileage holds no Illinois records, so there is no BLM figure anywhere on this page.
The state does not soften it either. Illinois ranks 46th in the nation for publicly owned land and keeps more than 97 percent of its acres in private ownership, which is why the Department of Natural Resources runs a programme that leases private ground back for public recreation. Since 2011 that programme has put more than 27,000 acres in 52 counties into public use and written management plans for over 175 landowners.
What follows for a traveller is simple. There is no open country to disappear into, no grid of section roads across public land, no camp-anywhere permission. There are named properties, each with an office, a gate schedule and a posted rule, and between them a dense grid of farm roads that belong to counties and townships. Read the property, not the map colour.
Source 1
The Shawnee National Forest, and the two maps that matter
The Shawnee sits across the bottom of the state between the Ohio and the Mississippi, described by its own home page as 289,000 acres of oak-hickory forest, wetland, open grassland, canyon, sheer bluff and unusual geology. Its About the Area page rounds the same ground to 280,000 acres and the Congressional Research Service counts 304,723 Forest Service acres for the whole state. Two ranger districts run it, Hidden Springs from Vienna and Mississippi Bluffs from Jonesboro, with the supervisor’s office on Highway 145 at Harrisburg.
Where you may drive is settled by a Motor Vehicle Use Map, and there is one for each district. The forest states that these maps show Forest Service roads, road numbers and road closure dates, that the paper run is out of print so the map now exists online only, that they are reissued every year, and that acquiring the current one is the motor vehicle user’s own responsibility. A large fold-out forest guide map is sold at the offices for $14 and covers roads, land ownership and the main recreation sites, which is a different job from the use map.
For live road conditions the forest publishes none of its own and points travellers at the Illinois Department of Transportation instead. The other useful download is the wilderness and watershed closure order with its map, because it decides where stock may go and, more to the point here, where nothing on wheels may go at all.
Source 6
Seven wilderness areas and a ten-dollar campground
Seven wilderness areas cover about 10 percent of the Shawnee, roughly 30,000 acres, and the forest calls them its most rugged and remote ground. No permit is required to enter one or to camp in one. Nothing on wheels may go in: mechanical and motorized vehicles and equipment are prohibited, and the forest names wheeled carts, bicycles and drones in the same breath. Special restrictions apply in Garden of the Gods, Lusk Creek and Bay Creek, and designated natural areas inside five of the seven are marked on the ground with yellow posts.
Outside wilderness the developed camping is cheap and plain. Sites are first come, first served with no reservations taken at all, usually open from 1 April to 15 December, ten dollars a night, two tents and two vehicles and eight people to a site, quiet hours from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., check-out at 2 p.m. and a 14-day ceiling on any one site. Johnson Creek, Oak Point, Tower Rock and Camp Cadiz are the four the forest names as able to take a rig up to 40 feet, and Oak Point at Lake Glendale carries electric sites, showers and a dump station, and Pounds Hollow has a single electric loop.
Beyond those, primitive camping is free anywhere on forest land outside developed recreation areas, all year, with the water and natural-area setbacks the rules section sets out. Between the two there is no middle tier: no hookups in the backcountry, no dispersed camping on the lake shores, and no booking system to fall back on.
Source 7
One OHV park, and why your truck is not invited
Illinois adopted a single rule for motorized trail riding on state ground in March 2024, and it is short. Part 135 of Title 17 restricts an off-highway vehicle site to three machines and no others: an all-terrain vehicle 50 inches or less wide with a dry weight of 1,500 pounds or less on three or more non-highway tires; an off-highway motorcycle on two wheels; and a recreational off-highway vehicle 64 inches or less wide with a dry weight under 2,000 pounds for petrol or 3,000 for electric, on four or more non-highway tires with a non-straddle seat and a steering wheel. Read the list and a plated pickup, van or wagon is not on it.
The site itself is Sahara Woods, a reclaimed strip mine five miles west of Harrisburg and south of Illinois 13, with a trail visitors centre, restrooms, paved parking and nearly 30 miles of trail. It runs 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Monday, caps the day at 120 vehicles, and the 2026 season was scheduled to open on 1 May and run through the last full weekend of January 2027. A one-day permit is $20 a vehicle and a four-day permit $65, nonrefundable for any reason including weather.
Every vehicle needs a manufacturer-fitted rollover protection system and working manufacturer seat belts, a flag on a flexible mast at least 72 inches tall carrying an orange flag of at least 72 square inches, working brakes, and a sound level no higher than 96 decibels. Each rider files a registration form and a liability waiver before arrival and collects a wristband at the office. And the sentence that decides your trip: all vehicles must be trailered to the park.
Everywhere else on state ground the answer is no. The public use rule makes it unlawful to operate any motor vehicle other than on roadways or trails designated for that activity, and to operate an off-road vehicle anywhere except a roadway designated for vehicular use or an area the Department has designated for off-road use. Hidden Springs State Forest puts it in one line for its visitors: keep all vehicles on gravel roads, pads, or parking lots.
Source 20
Four state forests, four different gates
Sand Ridge is the largest at 7,550 acres by its home page and 7,500 by its own history page, a block of sand prairie, oak-hickory and planted pine on hundred-foot dunes left by the Illinois River, southwest of Peoria at Forest City. It carries 55 miles of marked trail, 120 miles of fire lane, 26 miles of designated snowmobile trail once four inches of snow is down, a 27-site campground with room for two vehicles a site, and twelve backcountry sites that need a permit from the headquarters, the campground host, the silent host or the state booking system.
Trail of Tears, just over 5,000 acres by its home page and 5,114 by its history, sits in the Ozark Hills of western Union County five miles northwest of Jonesboro, on shallow chert soils with narrow rocky ridge tops and gravel-bottomed creeks in the valleys. Its gravel roads close to vehicles from 24 December until the end of the spring turkey season, generally the second week of May, and every camp inside that window is walk-in. Timber rattlesnakes and northern copperheads both live there and the forest says so plainly.
Big River covers 2,900 acres in Henderson County eight miles north of Oquawka, assembled from a 1925 refuge, purchases in the 1940s and a lease from the Army Corps of Engineers, with 60 miles of firebreaks cut through it and a fire tower at the headquarters. Hidden Springs, formerly Shelby State Forest, is about 1,200 acres near Clarksburg ten miles southeast of Shelbyville, in three separate tracts along Richland Creek.
- 01Sand Ridge, Forest City, Mason County: 7,550 acres, 55 miles of trail, 120 miles of fire lane, Pine and Oak campgrounds plus Horseman’s Park and twelve backcountry sites
- 02Trail of Tears, Jonesboro, Union County: 5,114 acres, the 222-acre Ozark Hills Nature Preserve inside it, a 120-acre state nursery, and gravel roads gated from 24 December to the second week of May
- 03Big River, Oquawka, Henderson County: 2,900 acres, 60 miles of firebreaks, tent and trailer sites at Shady Pines with a permit from the office
- 04Hidden Springs, near Clarksburg, Shelby County: about 1,200 acres in three tracts, Possum Creek Class C campground with a disposal station, permits issued by staff on rounds
Source 23
The Corps of Engineers built the water
Twenty-three of the 24 federal campgrounds a vehicle can reach in Illinois sit on Army Corps of Engineers ground, which makes the Corps the single most useful federal landlord in the state for anyone sleeping in or beside a vehicle. The Corps Lakes Gateway lists ten Illinois projects: Carlyle, Farmdale, the Illinois Waterway, the Kaskaskia and Mississippi river projects, three Ohio River pools, Rend and Shelbyville.
Carlyle, fifty miles east of St. Louis on US 50, is the largest lake in Illinois. Rend Lake near Mount Vernon holds 18,900 acres of water and 20,000 acres of land with nearly 800 sites in five public campgrounds. Lake Shelbyville has 11,100 acres of water at an average depth of 18 feet, 23,000 acres of land, six federal campgrounds and two state parks on its shore. Upstream, ten campgrounds line the Mississippi River pools, and the Rivers Project at Modoc manages five dams, seven locks, 300 miles of dikes and revetment and 110,000 acres of land and water.
One federal regulation covers all of them, and the rules section below sets it out: designated sites only, and a ceiling of 14 days in any 30 on a single project. The practical warning is different. Not every facility at a Corps lake is run by the Corps, because the agency marks some areas as its own and leaves others to state or private operators, so the rules that apply to your night are whoever posts the campground. Read the sign at the entrance rather than the name on the dam.
Source 36
Midewin, a tallgrass prairie built on an arsenal
Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie is the other Forest Service unit in Illinois, on the old Joliet Arsenal in Will County, two miles north of Wilmington on State Route 53, which the Forest Service notes is also Historic Route 66. Its home page calls the place a 20,283-acre restoration and then, a few lines down the same page, describes about half of 18,225 acres as open to the public. Both figures are the agency’s. Roughly 9,000 acres are open with 33 miles of trail, most of it running on old roadbeds, and about 22 miles of that is shared between walkers, riders and bicycles.
For a vehicle Midewin is a day stop and nothing more. Trails run 4 a.m. to 10 p.m., the prairie states that it is a day use only site where overnight camping is not permitted, and at the time of writing its supervisor had no forest orders in force at all. Wilmington, Elwood and Manhattan sit on its boundary, and the welcome centre inside the supervisor’s office gives out free trail maps.
It is worth the detour for what it is rather than for the driving. Bison graze part of it, the restoration work is visible from the trailheads, and it is the only place in northern Illinois where a traveller can stand in something close to the landscape the state was named for.
Source 17
One refuge that charges, and thirty-nine Park Service acres
Most of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s 90,726 Illinois acres are Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge, established on 5 August 1947 and spread across Williamson, Jackson and Union counties with its visitor centre five miles west of Marion. It holds 44,000 acres of upland and bottomland forest, cropland, brushland, prairie, wetland and lakes, with a 4,050-acre congressionally designated wilderness inside it and three campgrounds ranging from primitive to cabins. More than 160 miles of the River to River Trail cross southern Illinois and a section of it runs through the refuge wilderness.
The Park Service’s share is the smallest holding of any state that has units at all: 39 acres. Its Illinois page lists Lincoln Home National Historic Site at Springfield, New Philadelphia National Historic Site, Pullman National Historical Park in Chicago and the Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument, together with the Lewis and Clark, Mormon Pioneer and Trail of Tears national historic trails, which cross the state without owning much of it.
This is the shape of federal Illinois away from the Shawnee: town blocks, a refuge and a string of reservoirs. None of it is country you drive into and camp at will, and all of it is worth a day.
Source 38
Seasons: water first, then heat, then salt
The state climatologist is blunt about the hazard that matters. Flooding is the single most damaging weather hazard in Illinois, heavy precipitation has risen since the 1940s, flood peaks on Illinois rivers have risen with it, and annual flood losses since 1983 are the third highest in the nation. May and June are the wettest months, and every year the state sees rainstorms that produce forty or more flash floods with four to eight inches of rain in a few hours over small areas.
The north and south of Illinois are different countries for a driver. Yearly rain exceeds 48 inches in the south and falls below 32 in the north; snow does the reverse, 36 inches a year up north against under ten in the far south. The north spends about 140 days a year at or below freezing and the south about 80. The Shawnee Hills, standing 500 to 900 feet above the ground around them, pull an extra 10 to 15 percent of annual precipitation onto the southern forest, which is exactly where the unpaved roads are.
Winter is an equipment problem rather than a traction problem. In the 2026 winter season through April the Department of Transportation counted 45,000 lane miles to cover, 1,900 plough trucks available, over 357,500 tons of salt used and $116.2 million spent statewide. Illinois publishes no chain law and no traction standard, so nothing on a highway here will stop you, but everything under the vehicle will pay for it.
The forest and forest-adjacent gates follow the calendar rather than conditions. Shawnee campgrounds usually run 1 April to 15 December, Tower Rock is open 1 May to 15 December, Trail of Tears shuts its gravel on 24 December until the spring turkey season ends, and the Snake Road at LaRue closes to vehicles 15 March to 15 May and again 1 September to 30 October.
Source 28
Passes and routes
-
Ohio River Scenic BywayPaved
About 300 miles in Illinois; 943 miles across three states
The lower Ohio at the Indiana line to the confluence at Cairo
The Forest Service describes the Illinois portion as roughly 300 miles ending where the Ohio meets the Mississippi at Cairo, running through the rolling country of the Ohio River valley past Garden of the Gods, Pounds Hollow, High Knob, Rim Rock and Tower Rock, along with Cave-In-Rock State Park and a string of small river towns. The Federal Highway Administration gives 943 miles for the whole three-state byway and allows two and a half days to drive it. 12
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Great River RoadPaved
2,069 miles end to end
The Mississippi shore of Illinois, as one state’s share of a ten-state route
Illinois carries All-American Road status for its share of the ten-state route, the highest designation the federal programme gives. The Federal Highway Administration lists the byway at 2,069 miles and allows six days to drive it or ten to enjoy it, while the same page describes the road as following the Mississippi for 3,000 miles from northern Minnesota to the Gulf. Both figures are the agency’s. No length is published for the Illinois section alone. 29
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Historic Route 66Paved
1,408.6 miles across six states
Across Illinois on the old alignment, including State Route 53 past Midewin
Both an All-American Road and a National Scenic Byway, and the one drive in Illinois that people cross oceans for. The Federal Highway Administration gives 1,408.6 miles for the whole route and suggests four or five days to drive it but several days per state to see it. The Forest Service places its Midewin headquarters on State Route 53, which it calls Historic Route 66, two miles north of Wilmington, so a tallgrass restoration and a motoring pilgrimage turn out to be the same stop. 30
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Historic National RoadPaved
824.15 miles across six states
The Indiana line west across Illinois toward the Mississippi
An All-American Road following what the Federal Highway Administration calls the nation’s first federally funded interstate highway, the road that opened the country westward and carried goods and people for two centuries. The agency gives 824.15 miles for the full route and suggests two and a half days simply to drive it, or day trips and multi-day itineraries to take portions of it. It publishes no separate length for the Illinois miles. 31
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Lincoln HighwayPaved
178.8 miles
Lynwood on the Indiana line to the Mississippi crossing at Fulton
A National Scenic Byway wholly inside Illinois, and the only state on the whole transcontinental Lincoln Highway to hold that designation. The Federal Highway Administration lists it at 178.8 miles and calls it a 179-mile portion in the same entry, both figures on one page, and allows five to six hours to visit the entire byway. It runs through urban cityscape, riverfront towns and rolling prairie from the eastern portal to the Mississippi. 32
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Illinois River RoadPaved
291 miles
The Illinois River valley, with visitor information at Ottawa and at Peoria
A National Scenic Byway wholly inside Illinois that follows a valley cut by glacial meltwater, through forest, wetland, bluff and prairie. The Federal Highway Administration gives 291 miles and reckons seven hours to drive the whole thing, or two days for each of seven nature activity loops hung off it. The Corps of Engineers visitor centre at Starved Rock Lock and Dam, between Ottawa and Utica on the same river, looks down on one of the eight locks of the Illinois Waterway. 33
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Meeting of the Great Rivers Scenic RoutePaved
33 miles
The Alton and Grafton reach, where the Missouri, Mississippi and Illinois rivers meet
The shortest of the seven designated byways and the densest. The Federal Highway Administration gives 33 miles, suggests two days to enjoy it, and describes three rivers meeting to form a 35,000-acre floodplain under limestone bluffs carrying nearly 20,000 acres of forest. The Department of Transportation runs two free ferries across the Illinois River on and near this route, at Brussels a mile west of Grafton and at Kampsville, both around the clock, seven days a week. 34
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees on the byway and the ferries on it are free
- Season
- Open year-round
-
LaRue Pine Hills Road (Forest Road 236)
About 35 miles round trip from Jonesboro
Jonesboro to the bluff top above the Mississippi floodplain, or Route 3 at Wolf Lake
The Forest Service calls this its scenic drive on the Mississippi Bluffs district: a winding road to the top of the bluffs above the LaRue Pine Hills and Otter Pond Research Natural Area, the 250th research natural area in the country, holding more than 1,350 species of plant and animal and 35 percent of the state’s plant species. Pine Hills Campground sits on it at ten dollars a night with no potable water, eight people and two vehicles a site, cash or check only. 10
- Vehicle
- A mixture of state, county and forest roads. Gravel at the top
- Season
- Campground open year-round
-
Snake Road, the LaRue Road below Pine Hills
2.5 miles of it close seasonally
The base of the Pine Hills bluffs alongside LaRue Swamp
A public road that shuts twice a year so that snakes can cross it. Before 1972 it was open all year and animals died on it, so the Forest Service began closing a 2.5-mile segment while snakes, frogs and salamanders move between the swamp and the bluffs, and it now closes for two months each spring and autumn. About 59 percent of the reptile species and 66 percent of the amphibian species known in Illinois live in the natural area either side of it. The research natural area’s own rules allow horses on Forest Road 345 and nowhere else inside it, and ban motorized and non-motorized vehicles off road entirely. 13
- Vehicle
- Open to walkers whenever it is shut to vehicles
- Season
- Closed to vehicles 15 March to 15 May and 1 September to 30 October
-
Garden of the Gods road, off Karbers Ridge
Harrisburg by Route 145 and Route 34, then Karbers Ridge Road and a forest road north
The Forest Service calls this one of the most photographed places in the state, and the drive is the whole of the access: Route 145 south five miles from Harrisburg, Route 34 south ten, Karbers Ridge Road east two and a half, then a forest road north a mile and a half. Pharaoh Campground is open all year with twelve sites, tables, grills, toilets and drinking water, at ten dollars a night. Overnight parking is allowed only at the backpacker’s lot; the picnic and observation car parks are day use. 11
- Vehicle
- Any car to the trailhead. Three car parks at the top
- Season
- Observation area and campground open year-round; picnic area and trail 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
-
Sahara Woods OHV trails
Nearly 30 miles
505 Trail Head Lane at Carrier Mills, five miles west of Harrisburg and south of Illinois 13
The one off-highway vehicle park the state runs, and no other appears anywhere in its site listing. It is cut into a reclaimed strip mine beside Sahara Lake, with a trail visitors centre, restrooms and paved parking. Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Monday and capped at 120 vehicles a day. A one-day permit is $20 a vehicle, a four-day permit $65, and both are nonrefundable even if the site shuts for weather. Rollover protection, seat belts, a 72-inch whip with an orange flag, working brakes and under 96 decibels are all required. 22
- Vehicle
- ATVs to 50 inches, off-highway motorcycles and off-highway vehicles to 64 inches only. Everything trailered in
- Season
- Reopened 1 May 2026 and scheduled to run to the last full weekend of January 2027
-
Trail of Tears State Forest roads
The State Forest road off Illinois 127, north of the Route 146 junction, five miles northwest of Jonesboro
A 5,114-acre state forest in what the state calls one of the most rugged landscapes in Illinois, on shallow chert soils with narrow rocky ridge tops and clear gravel-bottomed streams in the valleys. Class C sites with vehicle access and Class D backpack sites sit along the road system, some with Civilian Conservation Corps log shelters and privies, and campers without a reservation register on arrival at a silent host box. Timber rattlesnakes and northern copperheads are both resident and the state says so on the page. 24
- Vehicle
- Gravel. Class C sites have vehicle access; during the closure every camp is walk-in
- Season
- Gravel roads closed to vehicles 24 December until the spring turkey season ends, generally the second week of May
Rules worth knowing
- Fourteen days in twenty-eight on the Shawnee, and 28 a year
- Forest Order 09-08-25-02, signed 25 September 2025 and still in force across the ten counties of the Mississippi Bluffs and Hidden Springs districts, prohibits camping or keeping camping equipment in place for more than 14 days in a 28-day period, and more than 28 cumulative days in a calendar year. It also prohibits camping within 150 feet of the shoreline of Cedar Lake, Little Cedar Lake or Kinkaid Lake, or within a quarter mile of a developed campground or picnic ground. The forest’s camping page and its Camp Cadiz page each describe the limit as 14 consecutive days; the order is the enforceable version and the annual cap appears only there. 14
- Primitive camping is free, and it starts a quarter mile out
- Outside developed recreation areas the Shawnee allows primitive camping free, at any time of year, with no permit. The Camp Cadiz page states it most precisely: a quarter mile outside developed areas, at least 150 feet from any water source for both camp and washing, no camping in the 80 designated natural areas or within 150 feet of lakes and streams or near trails, and no permanent structures. The camping page adds that lake shores are out, that you must park where overnight parking is allowed such as a trailhead, and that anywhere signed as a day use area open 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. is closed to overnight parking. 9
- On state ground you camp in a campground or not at all
- Part 130 of the Illinois Administrative Code opens with one sentence that settles dispersed camping on every acre the Department of Natural Resources owns, leases or manages: camping is permitted only in established campgrounds on designated areas, and camping is prohibited in any other area. The public use rule repeats it as an offence to use a tent, trailer or any other camping device except in a designated camping area. A permit runs up to 14 consecutive nights between 1 May and 30 September, with a ceiling of 14 nights in any 30 days at one site; from 1 October to 30 April a permit may be issued for an unlimited number of nights. Trailer and vehicle camps are both capped at 40 feet overall. 19
- Ten tons, twenty miles an hour, and only on designated road
- On any property the Department owns, leases or manages it is unlawful to exceed a combined vehicle and content weight limit of 20,000 pounds on a Department roadway unless a sign says otherwise, to drive faster than 20 mph on any road, path or drive, to exceed 10 mph in any parking area, to operate a motor vehicle anywhere other than roadways or trails designated for that activity, or to park outside a posted parking area. A site superintendent may give written permission for exceptions, which is how contractors and lessees get in. These are the numbers a loaded rig with a trailer should know before it turns off the highway. 18
- The OHV park admits three machines, and a plated truck is none of them
- Part 135, effective 27 March 2024, restricts trails, routes and areas within an off-highway vehicle site to recreational off-highway vehicles, all-terrain vehicles and off-highway motorcycles only. The code defines each one: an ATV at 50 inches or less and 1,500 pounds dry on three or more non-highway tires; an OHV at 64 inches or less and 2,000 pounds dry for petrol or 3,000 for electric, on four or more non-highway tires with a non-straddle seat and a steering wheel; an OHM on two wheels. Reading those three definitions against a licensed full-size truck or van is our own judgement, not a quotation, because Illinois publishes no exemption sentence. Every operator 16 or over needs a valid driver’s licence, and each rider files a registration form and liability waiver before the vehicle is allowed on the trails that day. 20
- Wilderness means no permit and no wheels
- The Shawnee’s seven wilderness areas make up about a tenth of the forest, roughly 30,000 acres, and they are the one part of Illinois where the rule is simpler than everywhere else. No permit is required to enter or to camp. Mechanical and motorized vehicles and equipment are prohibited, including wheeled carts, bicycles and drones. Camp on existing sites away from trails, water and bluff tops, pack everything out, bury waste at least 200 feet from campsites, trails and water, and burn only dead and down wood in an existing ring. Special restrictions apply in Garden of the Gods, Lusk Creek and Bay Creek, and designated natural areas exist inside five of the seven with their boundaries marked by yellow posts. 8
- What the signed wilderness order adds to that
- Order 09-08-25-03, signed 29 September 2025, puts the detail behind the wilderness sign. It makes it an offence to possess or use a wagon, cart or other vehicle in any designated wilderness, caps a party at ten people in Bay Creek, Garden of the Gods and Lusk Creek, bars stock from those three between 1 December and 31 March, forbids camping with stock in them at all, and closes Lusk Creek to stock for at least 24 hours after an inch of rain in a day during April, May, September, October and November. Within the Eagle Creek, Big Grand Pierre Creek, Lusk Creek and Upper Bay Creek watersheds, stock is confined to designated equestrian trails, public roads and the parking and confinement areas laid out for it. 16
- Natural areas: a gas stove, a designated site, and no climbing
- Order 09-08-25-04, signed 24 September 2025, covers the designated natural areas scattered through both ranger districts, and the Shawnee has 80 of them. Inside one it is an offence to build, maintain, attend or use a fire, campfire or stove fire, with gas stove fires the single exemption; to camp anywhere except a designated site; to rappel or rock climb, which the order ties to the protection of threatened, endangered, rare, unique or vanishing plants and animals; and to ride, hitch, tether, hobble or lead a horse or pack animal in violation of the posted instructions. Natural area boundaries are marked on the ground with yellow posts, so this is a rule you can see coming. 15
- Corps lakes: designated sites only, fourteen days in thirty
- Because 23 of the 24 federal campgrounds a vehicle can reach in Illinois sit on Corps of Engineers water, 36 CFR 327.7 governs most federal nights in the state. It allows camping only in the sites and areas a District Commander has designated, and nowhere else on the project. Staying at one or more campsites on any single water resource project beyond 14 days in any 30 consecutive days needs written permission. Placing equipment at a site, or turning up without daily occupancy, in order to reserve it for later, is prohibited, and so is digging or levelling ground or building any structure without written permission. 35
- Firewood: fifty miles, and nothing from out of state
- Bringing firewood onto any property the Department owns, leases or manages is unlawful if the wood came from more than 50 miles away, unless it is certified by the US Department of Agriculture or by an Illinois state agency. Firewood may not be brought into Illinois from outside the state at all unless it carries federal certification or another state’s. A conservation police officer may confiscate wood that breaks the rule. Fires on state ground are restricted to Department camp stoves or a visitor’s own metal grill at a designated campfire site, and are prohibited wherever open fire bans are posted. Buy it where you burn it and expect to be asked. 18
- There is no chain law, and your studs are probably illegal
- Illinois publishes no traction or chain requirement. What the Vehicle Code does say, at 625 ILCS 5/12-401, is that no vehicle may run on an improved highway with any block, stud, flange, cleat, ridge, lug or projection of metal or wood standing radially beyond the tread. The only exemptions it names are rural letter carriers running metal studs between 15 November and 1 April, certain disability and disabled-veteran plate holders living on unincorporated county or township roads in the same window, and tracked vehicles. Chains are explicitly allowed: nothing in the section prohibits tire chains of reasonable proportion when needed for safety because of snow, ice or conditions tending to cause a skid. Tread below 3/32 of an inch may not be sold or leased for highway use. 21
- Three free ferries, and two of them run all night
- Illinois is cut by three large rivers and the state pays to get cars across some of them. The Department of Transportation owns and operates two free ferries on the Illinois River, 24 hours a day and seven days a week: the Kampsville ferry, which carries Illinois Route 108 across to meet Route 100, the Great River Road south; and the Brussels ferry, a mile west of Grafton, linking Route 100 to Calhoun County. On the Ohio River the Cave-In-Rock Ferry is also free, supported jointly by Illinois and Kentucky. The Ste. Genevieve to Modoc, Grafton and Golden Eagle crossings are fee-based and not maintained by the Department, so check them before you build a route around one. 27
- Crab Orchard is a fee area and every user needs a pass
- The one refuge that matters to a traveller here charges at the gate. Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge states that it is a federal fee area and entrance passes are required for all refuge users, with a one-day pass at $2.00 for a vehicle and a watercraft, a seven-day pass at $5.00, and a refuge annual pass at $15.00 for a vehicle or $10.00 for a watercraft. An America the Beautiful interagency pass admits one vehicle. Passes are sold at the campground, through the federal booking site and at a self-service kiosk at the Woodland Trail car park, and campground usage passes are priced by the campgrounds themselves. 37
- Winter here is a corrosion problem, not a traction problem
- The Department of Transportation budgeted its 2026 winter season around 45,000 lane miles of road, 1,900 plough trucks, more than 357,500 tons of salt and $116.2 million statewide through April. That is the number to plan maintenance around: an Illinois winter rarely strands a competent driver, and it will quietly eat brake lines, fasteners, frame rails and wiring on a vehicle that is not washed underneath. The state’s own winter guidance points travellers to its road conditions service rather than to any tire standard, and the Shawnee National Forest does the same, sending visitors to the Department of Transportation for current road conditions rather than publishing its own. 26
Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
US Forest Service (USFS)
National Park Service (NPS)
US Fish and Wildlife (USFW)
Bureau of Reclamation (USBR)
Department Of Defense (DOD)
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
Other Federal
State
Local
Alaska Native Lands (Patented or Interim Conveyed)
Alaska Native Allotment
Road
Primitive Road
Road
Primitive Road
Trail
Roads open to all Vehicles, Yearlong
Roads open to all Vehicles, Seasonal
Roads open to highway legal vehicles only, Yearlong
Roads open to highway legal vehicles only, Seasonal
Special Designation, Yearlong
Special Designation, Seasonal
Trails open to all vehicles, Yearlong
Trails open to all vehicles, Seasonal
Trails open to vehicles 50" or less in width, Yearlong
Trails open to vehicles 50" or less in width, Seasonal
Trails open to motorcycles, Yearlong
Trails open to motorcycles, Seasonal
Special Designation, Seasonal
Trails Open to Wheeled Vehicles Only < 50" in Width, Yearlong
Trails Open to Wheeled Vehicles Only < 50" or Less in Width, Seasonal
Wilderness Area
Wilderness Study Area
