What is OutsideAtlas?
OutsideAtlas is a free, ad-supported atlas of US outdoor recreation — hiking trails, national parks, federal campgrounds, recreation areas, and the wilderness that surrounds them. We aggregate trail data from OpenStreetMap and park, campground, and recreation-area data from Recreation.gov (federal RIDB, covering NPS, USFS, BLM, USACE, and BOR), normalize them into a consistent schema, and publish state-by-state, county-by-county, and city-by-city — so anyone can find what they need without a paywall or signup.
Why does this exist?
Most existing outdoor directories either require an account, charge a subscription, or are limited to a single activity, state, or land manager. The underlying data — trail names, lengths, difficulty, surfaces, park amenities, campsite hookups, access rules — is public. We made it browsable, searchable, and SEO-discoverable across the entire United States.
What we add on top
- 5-day weather forecasts for every trail and park (Open-Meteo)
- Dynamic packing lists tuned to the current forecast + trail stats
- Spatial search — find trails and parks within a radius of your GPS
- City and county landing pages for every named place we’ve geocoded
- Saved favorites + completed list stored locally in your browser (no account)
- Campsite-level detail — every reservable site has its own page with hookups, capacity, and booking link
How is the data sourced?
Every trail page links back to its OpenStreetMap source. Every park page links back to its Recreation.gov entry. See our methodology page for the full pipeline (Overpass queries, RIDB endpoints, geocoding, classification rules).
Limitations to be aware of
- Trail conditions change — closures, washouts, seasonal restrictions are not reflected here. Always check with the land manager.
- Difficulty is derived from OSM tags (SAC scale, length, elevation) and is approximate.
- Trails without a name in OpenStreetMap are excluded.
- Some states had Overpass timeouts during the last fetch — we re-run periodically to fill gaps.