Passing through north of Denver, then there’s a nice little place you can stop and spend an evening. A dispersed site right around Nederland, you’ll find this spot for free camping outside Boulder Colorado.
You’ll have to travel a few back roads to get there, and it’s about 15 or so miles out of town, but it is a great fast stopover for a trip through when you need a place to crash for a night.
Name: Magnolia Ridge
Location: Nederland, Colorado
GPS: GPS: 39.957461, -105.446305
Elevation: 8465′
Cost: Free
Number of campsites: No designated sites, but enough room for a few cars, a small rv (teardrop maybe), and tent campers
Hookups: None.
Amenities: None. The tent area looked like it had a fire pit. I wouldn’t use it though, since it was in the middle of the woods in a typical “don’t burn things here” area lol.
Privacy: If you are tent camping, yes. If you are in a vehicle, not so much.
Parking: Dirt road with a dirt parking lot near the end.
Noise: none. It was very quiet all night. There was talk of hearing shooting nearby if it’s hunting season.
Cell signal: No sprint or verizon cell service.
Scenery: Pretty spot.
Just passing through, we needed somewhere to pull in for the night. Looking back on the map of getting from Denver to this spot, I thought this was a long twisty turning drive. Turns out, it was only that way because that happens to be the route we took. There is a more direct one. I can not help you with that one. hahahaha [sigh].
Taking highway 72 was the twisty turning way. It was a gorgeous drive, though!
This spot is on a short dirt road, that leads to a small parking lot. It was big enough for a small class C, but probably nothing bigger. Along the fence line on the way down were a few spots for cars that had set up tents into the woods a bit.
If you’re camping with a group, there was a good size area for a tent group.
A road at the back of the parking lot looked like it lead deeper in, but it was very rough looking and I wouldn’t recommend anything besides a 4×4. (even then it looked pretty sketchy).
I pulled over in the first spot, since it was plenty big for a van. It was along the dirt road closer to the entrance. No one else camping was within eyesight since I went with the meadow area vs the more popular plot of woods.
Seemed to be a good place to stay for a night or two if tent camping. A good place to pull in quick for the night.
The downfall of using GPS to get somewhere and then not having cell coverage? It took so long to get out here that I really thought we were an hour from any town, in the middle of nowhere. Pulling out to leave the next day, knowing we needed to go north and not back south we turned the opposite direction from where we came and decided to drive until we had service to pull up directions.
Turns out? This spot is only 10 minutes from a tiny town called Nederland. I really, REALLY wish I would have known that the day before. It even had a lake!
After telling someone about this site, I found out there were others on the same road that were a little larger to accommodate bigger rigs that the locals like a little more. If you head this direction, make sure you download some maps for offline mode, and explore a little!
Love Colorado and want to find out where else I recommend visiting? Check out my entire Colorado guides here!
I discovered this location using the freecamping website, and followed up with a stop on the official Forest Service website on the details before we stopped.
