Joshua Tree North Dispersed Camping

Pros:

You can be 1000 + feet from another camper if you like.
Weeknights are quiet.
Walmart, stores, and restaurants are only 13 miles away in Yucca Valley city.
Joshua Tree National Park west entrance is 11 miles.
The lakebed is flat with adequate cell service.
A dump station and water may be available at nearby Joshua Tree Lake RV & Campground for a fee.

Cons:

On weekends people come out to party and blast their music at all hours.
Some ATV riders intentionally ride close campers just to kick up dust and be jerks.
Many campfire areas are trashed.
Permanent campers - the government does not enforce any BLM rules at this location.
Access roads in poor condition - the dirt and asphalt roads are not maintained and are rutted.

We went N on Sunfair to Broadway and yes, watch for drop off when the asphalt turns to dirt. We just went a little to the E, then turned into a big site area on the right. Views to the S & E were nice, but sadly there is some trash and several RVs that have obviously overstayed their 14 day limit, possibly for a year kind of overstay. One didn’t even have a tow vehicle. Had to wonder what they did with their waste…
But there was a cool art installation by Gerald Clarke - “Earth Memory” on the dry lake! We liked free, but the “long termers” gave me a bit of a sketchy vibe.

We found free camping at Joshua Tree North BLM in California. In this video, I give you a walking tour of the free dispersed camping area at the Joshua Tree North BLM in Southern California located just outside of the town of Joshua Tree. The Joshua Tree North BLM free camping area makes a great basecamp to explore nearby Joshua Tree National Park. Verizon cellular service clocked in at 16.3 Mbps download speed and 3.90 Mbps upload speed. AT&T cellular service clocked in at 14.7 Mbps download speed and 20.4 Mbps upload speed. T-Mobile cellular service clocked in at 7.60 Mbps download speed and 4.32 Mbps upload speed.

This is a great spot. Especially if you stay closer to the entrance. The cons for me were that the cell service was nowhere near as good as people have spoke about in previous reviews. I would be teaching a class online and suddenly the Internet would just cut out. And sometimes it would slow down to the point where I couldn’t stream video from my calls. The road is ridiculous. I feel like it would be very easy to smooth it out even the tiniest bit so that when you drag your trailer down it everything inside doesn’t shake up like a soda can when you’re only going 5 mph. I parked out by the little rock formation and I didn’t know that was a shooting range. So when the weekend came I woke up to people firing at the rocks all day long about 30 feet from my window lol. Not a problem just something to know if you decide to camp out there by the rocks. It was beautiful and peaceful though and I felt safe and it was close to everything. I would camp there again, on my days off.

We stayed for about 10 nights. The weekdays are quiet and the weekends are louder. Lots of people come out to ride their ATVs. It didn’t really bother us. There is a campground up the road where you can pay to empty tanks and refill water. Our Verizon download speeds were around 9 or 10. Can’t remember upload but we were fine with video calls for work. Plenty of room and level. We found the areas near the entrances to the BLM had very established camps but the dried lake bed area was plenty of distance away to not notice them. We took Sunfair to Sunflower coming in and it seemed a little dicey in places with our 30ft class C but we made it without problems. We eventually found the option to take Sunfair to Broadway which has more pavement driving. There is a big hole where the pavement ends on Broadway so you will want to move over to the opposite side of traffic to avoid it.

I stayed here one night, and it worked fine for me. As other reviewers have mentioned, there are some people who are here long term, but it wasn’t an issue. I camped on the actual playa and it felt safe. Other campers were there, but there’s lots of space. However because it’s a playa, there’s not a lot of privacy. I didn’t have any issue with noise, but it was a Sunday night.

this site is literally right outside of the park on off the highway, which i can see why people might not like it, but you can’t hear any cars regardless. There are rings set up at every site already by past campers. This entrance to the park has 4WD trails to the left as you drive in, they’re super fun and a way to get away from the touristy spots. saw some amazing ecology and stars!

Don’t stay here. This campsite is the worst dispersed camping area we’ve ever seen and we’ve been camping across the whole west for months straight.

People are clearly living here and have set up questionable looking structures and camps, doesn’t seem like anyone patrols this area.

Cockroaches EVERYWHERE. Seems like the people living here have brought cockroaches to the area with their trash. We have a truck top tent and have not had a bug get into our tent in months and two cockroaches got in while getting ready for bed.

We did not stay. We quickly packed up and slept at a Walmart. The Walmart is 100% nicer than this site.