Hughesville Road Dispersed Camping

We frequently stay up Hughesville when we want a quick weekend trip from town. There are a lot of great spots to camp near and away from the road. Some are small, and some are great for large groups. We've stayed in probably 10 different sites over the years. My biggest complaints are people leaving their garbage behind, and folks ripping up the gravel road on their sxs's leaving a huge dust cloud in their wake. Otherwise the creek is always cold, and the views are spectacular. Can get occasional Verizon cell coverage closer to monarch, but better if you go back up the highway towards Belt.

Hughesville Road is also known as FR-120. It's best to pick up the Forest Vistor Map (or MVUM) for the Little Belt Mountains at the ranger station or get it online. Most of the sites in here are numbered and shown on the map. Depending on the time of year the lower portion of the creek (aptly named the dry fork of belt creek) may be dry. Most of the spots are for one or two units, however the last two spots on the map are large fields that can handle a large number of campers. We stayed in one of these and had it all to ourselves over the weekend. The single spots farther down were all full if they bordered the wet creek. The ones not on the creek or on the dry portion were mostly available. I also noticed many campers were not in use during the week. One thing is that the road, while in great shape, is gravel. The sites directly on the road are going to be very dusty if it has been dry.

There are few to no services up here, so come prepared. You can get water at the USFS campgrounds. There is a single gas pump in Monarch associated with the restaurant/motel/convenience store. If you need diesel, it's about 50 miles to a station (though Raynesford has an unmanned truck island at the 427 intersection). We found one little spot that got a very small amount of ATT and Verizon signal but otherwise you will need to drive about 6 miles from Monarch towards Belt to get any reception.

The Forest Visitor map shows some other roads in the Little Belt Mountains that also have dispersed camping sites. It may be worth your while to talk to the rangers or do some exploring on your own.

In the past few years we have noticed more and more people are not actively camping, rather leaving the unoccupied campers/tents/vehicles in spots to secure them for weeks on end. The 16 day limit does not appear to be enforced by the forrest service. Nothing like going to camp for 3 days only to observe 80% of the camp sites have a "dropped trailer".

This is very disappointing to observe, it should be policy to prevent this activity and mandate the campsites must be occupied each day/night.

Would gladly pay a fee at this area to help mitigate this.