American Spring Dispersed Camping

This is a National Forest boondocking spot in the mountains west of Los Alamos. It's up in the hills overlooking the city, and it's also near where the highway branches off to Bandelier.

When you take the turnoff to American Spring, there's an information board right at the turnoff about camping in the area. There's a network of little roads here, and quite a lot of spots that you could use for boondocking. The roads right at the beginning seem fine for any vehicle, but as you go further, some of them will need high clearance. I stayed in a site fairly close to the entrance.

There were a few day users, but only one other person camped here when I stayed in July 2017. There's some traffic noise during the day, but at night it was very quiet. There are no facilities - just a free place to camp. I had good LTE cell service. There are also some hiking options from here, and nice views down to Los Alamos (especially at night).

I went to scout out this location, and found that the roads were so badly rutted that it would not be safe to take my travel trailer in there, for fear of tearing off the sewer outlet. It would probably be OK for cars, vans and class C's, that don't have important parts dangling below the chassis.

There was no Verizon signal.

We stayed here because we had 2-3 bars of 4G LTE on Verizon and we needed to get caught up on some work. Only had one other person drive by and they didn’t stay long. I would stay here again. Access was easy for us we were in a Jeep Wrangler.

Spots near the entrance are good for Rv’s. Need clearance or mad driving skills to get back further. Fine for a stock 4x4 tho.

It was dark when we arrived. Only one other RV was there. We stayed towards the front since other comments said to and we could not see. On the ride up there were two time when we had to stop because there were about 15 elk crossing the road. It was an AMAZING experience, there were huge. When we woke up we had a beautiful view of the forest and there were deer. There were about 3 rv’s and it was pretty quiet.

The drive to it is beautiful. We were there in late December and there was snow. Only one other couple camping which was nice. Dispersed camping so no trash service.

We stayed in site fairly close to the entrance and off to the right on the East spur for 6 days in a 36’ motorhome and Cherokee Trailhawk. All of the sites are very well spaced, most being a hundred to several hundred yards apart. Ours was fairly close to the highway, but it was really only noticeable during "rush hour". Only a few other campers while we were here, and most only stayed a day or two. The interior roads are dirt and get pretty rough the further in you go, with some fairly large rocks and deep ruts, some 1’ to 1.5’ deep (see photos). Parts of the ENE spur gets pretty narrow in spots, but we did a small trailer or two back that far. American Springs road, heading off to the NNE, is in a little better shape, with only 2 or 3 bad sections, similar to those on the East and ENE spurs, until about 1.25 miles in, then it gets very rough and I wouldn’t recommend proceeding with anything other than a true 4x4 or OHV, but there are a number of secluded campsites back in there. There are a number of trails/dirt roads in the immediate area to hike, some with nice views of the valley and surrounding mountains. AT&T coverage was fair, with 2 Bars of LTE service and speeds up to 2 MB/s. There are quite a few trees, but we did manage to get DISH coverage to all three western satellites at our site through a gap between a couple of trees. We were also able to get about 50 OTA channels with our fixed omni antenna.

Regarding access to the area from the East of Los Alamos, be aware GPS will route you through Los Alamos onto NM 501, which goes through part of LANL and you have to go through security check points and your vehicle(s) are subject to search. If you have any firearms, you will not be allowed to go through the lab. So, if you have weapons or don’t want to be searched, the alternative is to take West Jemez Road/NM 4 through White Rock instead and save yourself a trip all the way up to Los Alamos, all the way back down, and then back up to the dispersed area.

We are novice RV campers in a rental 28-foot Class C and we took a chance on this place after visiting Bandalier NM on a Tuesday night in July. It's right off a paved road that is lightly but noisily traveled. The access road was in good shape but quickly deteriorated beyond our comfort level after a couple hundred yards off road. That said, there were plenty of choices for us to park the camper for the night and we had a great stay. Would definitely go back here again if we were in the area. Trucks and smaller campers probably have many more options than we did.

We had driven up from staying at Juniper camp ground the night before and needed a spot to stop after touring Los Alamos for the day. We were traveling north, so this spot was perfect for us. The roads to back areas are way to bumpy for us in a class B van, but we found some just fine closer to the main road. The road sounds were there until dusk...then a really beautiful rest. We also were able to get Verizon signals. We headed out after breakfast.

Decent area, fairly quiet. We didn’t venture back but there were plenty of options. Close to los alamos and Jemez falls