County Road 48 Dispersed Camping

This is one of our favorite free campsites in Colorado. First... it's HUGE. There are so many meandering roads back into the woods. I spent about 45 minutes driving various roads scouting out spots. Tons of options! We ended up driving down the main dirt road to another left hand pull off, driving a bit back that road and finding a gorgeous spot overlooking a ridge with views of the mountains.

We had decent Verizon service and were able to do basic work on our computers. When we needed to do heavier uploads, we drove 15 minutes into town and ate at the great Cuban restaurant, Buchi, and sat at their covered, outdoor patio. The food there, as well as Mountain High Pies is great.

Some of the roads into the secluded spots can be a bit tricky to navigate but we got our Class C in no problem taking it slow. I saw a ton of big rigs tucked away too.

We spent 5 days at the Tabor Campground at Turquoise Lake and then moved to the dispersed camping at County Road 48. Absolutely wonderful place to boon dock. Lot's of trees and shade, quiet, about 5 minutes to town (Leadville) where you can dump, get water, etc. Lot's of stuff was closed during the pandemic and social distancing. You don't have the great view of the lake like the campgrounds up the road but it's free and a really nice place.Enough Verizon signal to get online with a jetpack and get text and phone calls. Not enough for video streaming but almost. Good wifi at the coffee shop in town.

I’ve stayed here before but last night someone tried breaking into my vehicle or stealing items off my roof rack. My alarm went off at around 1:30am. My car alarm you have to hit really hard to go off. Never gives false alarms. Sorry neighbors but now the porch light stays on all night here.
Also two people running generators all night. I’ve found garbage left. Half cans of milk left in fire ring, not burned, but left. Other site had bags of dog poop. There are friendly people here, but also some shady.

Well spaced sites accessible by most rigs 35’ or less, but be prepared for some Texas pin striping and antenna damage due to low tree clearance. My roof is 12’ on a 25’ MH. I had to reinstall a couple of my antennas due to low trees over the road. The roads are a bit bumpy and you want to make sure your gear is secured. Fire ban was in effect during our visit. So, most campers tucked in at sunset keeping evening noise very low. Although in the heart of the Rockies and in the shadow of Mount Massive and Elbert, virtually no views other than of pine trees. Really strong cell service. Five minutes to Turquoise Lake and ten into Leadville. Can’t beat free camping. No water or camp host as you should expect in a dispersed campsite. We arrived late on a busy Friday and had no trouble finding a good spot with many spots still available. This is a great site for an impromptu trip to the lake and for those that prefer the anonymity of free dispersed camping and avoiding the typical overly nosey camp hosts. Would recommend for short term or extended stay.

I loved this spot! It was so beautiful seeing the mountains in the backdrop and it's really quiet and peaceful. One issue I had was Google. It tried to navigate be down County Road 4 and then a super super super steep dirt road that would have been disastrous even in my van. Make sure you take County Road 48 at the fork between County Road 4, County Road 48, and County Road 5A.

Data signal was good for me on Verizon and AT&T with AT&T being the strongest. Some others nearby had issues with Verizon so it just really depends on where you pick to park based on the signal strength.

I loved that it was close to town and we could grocery shop and eat at some really great restaurants. BTW, the Mexican food at Casa Sanchez 2 was some of the best Mexican food I've ever had and I'm from Texas so that's saying a lot! There's also the Leadville Sanitation District to dump your tanks and get potable water for a small fee that's also close by.

The only thing I didn't like was the air was pretty thin for me and I finally left after buying a couple of bottles of oxygen to help with breathing. I'd still go back though!

This site sits on a plateau above Leadville and is surrounded by Mountain views. Short 1/4 mile on pretty good gravel road leads to very level area with several established campsites with fire pits.
Using our Weboost we have 4 bars of 4g on Verizon and could stream video. Also 3-4 bars in At&T on the phones.

Not many campers at this time of year and it was very peaceful

One con was that previous campers are not burying human waste or picking up behind dogs.

We stayed here for 11 nights at the end of July and beginning of August 2019. We were camped with some friends, and had a wonderful time. The area is large and open, with plenty of level spots to camp.

Leadville is a lovely little town, with most of the amenities we needed for our stay here - including a dump station, albeit not free.

The only point really worth noting is regards the cell signal. Verizon was slow to the point of being almost non-existent. AT&T on the other hand was blazing fast....until the cell tower died. It did this several times during our stay - one time just for 20 minutes, but another time almost for an entire day.

AT&T: 60.2Mbps down / 32Mbps up / 65ms ping
Verizon: 0.55Mbps down / 0.01Mbps up / 155ms ping

Assuming you can deal with the possibility of the cell signal suddenly disappearing (the library in town has very fast WiFi apparently), then this is a great spot.

We stayed here for a little over two weeks in late July 2019. Excellent place to stay and explore the Leadville area. The max stay here is two weeks, but we did end up staying a few extra days to help time our next stop.

Road/Site Condition
The road coming is dirt and gravel. There is no washboard and it is easy to drive on. There are two main areas directly off County Road 48. However, from what I was told, there are many spots throughout the side/back roads to the left. I believe they can be accessed from the first main area or if you keep driving down 48 and turn left it circles around and they are apparently some spots. The two main areas are on the left side of the road. The first one is very close to the paved road and the other is about a mile away. Both are easy to access. We ended up staying at the second area. This area is wide open which was great for our solar. It was not too crowded when we arrived on a Sunday afternoon, but this is a very popular spot, so you are going to have neighbors. Most of the better spots were taken, but we were able to park behind a small row of trees on the left and had a great view of the mountains. There are areas to setup on the right and left side of the entrance “road”. The area is grassy, but surprisingly level. We had no trouble leveling. I would say 5-6 rigs of any size could fit on each side comfortably. At one point, we had more than that near us, but they were all Xscapers and knew each other. They graciously let us join their gatherings and we had a great time. Now we are Xscapers because we joined while staying here! Even with a large crowd, everyone was respectful and observed “quiet hours. It helped that most had solar, so generator noise was minimal.

Scenery
The area is beautiful. There is a great view of Mt. Elbert. The town of Leadville is a cute little mountain town. There are also several lakes and tons of hiking nearby.

Cell/Internet Access
Our cell phones are AT&T and we have AT&T and Verizon hotspots. We had 2-3 bars of Verizon, but it was unusable for me. The data was there, but it was very slow. The booster did not help either. AT&T was great. We had 2-3 bars and the data was speedy. However, the weird thing on AT&T was sporadically, we would lose all signal completely. It would typically last a few hours (one time was almost an entire day) and would randomly come back. We found that if we were out at the site, the city of Leadville was also out. Inconvenient if you have specific times you must work while on the road. Thankfully, I have a flexible schedule and could work around the issue. It was somewhat random, but we did notice it mostly went out in the late afternoon and it happened a bit more frequently on the weekends.

Amenity Access
The City of Leadville has an awesome dump/water station at the sanitation station as you come into town. It is about 5-10 minutes from the site. It is $5 to dump and $2.50 for water. There is a self-pay box, or you can pay inside during normal business hours. Some of the nearby National Park Forest campgrounds have water spigots. I’m not sure you can get water without camping there, but we did. Biggest issue was where to dump trash. All the dumpsters in town we either locked or had no household trash signs. We ended up dumping trash at the Shell’s car vacuum trash cans (our trash bags are small) a time or two. We also found a dumpster near the Silver Dollar National Forest campground that did not have a sign on it, so used that a time or two as well. The town of Leadville has a grocery store, Family Dollar and gas stations that have just about anything you would need while staying. I would recommend visiting Melanzana on the main strip in town. Neat, American-made shop. We did not visit many museums, but there are plenty to choose from. The lady at the Visitor Bureau was very nice and will give you any information you need on the town.