DirectoryCampsite
Onion Creek camps
Northeast of Moab, UtahBLM, Onion Creek
- Setting
- Creek canyon
- Camping
- Dispersed
- Pace
- Weekends fill
Planning notes, not a live road report. Weather, closures, and permits change. Confirm with the land manager before you go.
Onion Creek is the camping answer when you want to be near Moab without sleeping in a gravel lot behind a hotel. The road leaves the highway northeast of town and follows a canyon through a long series of stream crossings. Sites sit in the cottonwoods and on the benches. The creek is the view. It is not a sink.
The crossing in front of you
People quote a number of water crossings, and the number moves with the season and with how far up the canyon you drive. What matters is the water in front of the bumper. Clear water, axle-deep or less, with a bottom you can see, is a different decision than chocolate water moving sticks.
If you cannot see the bottom, you do not know whether the last storm moved a hole into the track. Turn around. A camp chair is not worth an engine full of water. Walk it if you are unsure. The road continues; your evening does not depend on the last site in the canyon.
Use a site that already exists
Park in an existing spot. The canyon does not need a new spur to a slightly flatter patch of grass. Trailers and long wheelbases have a harder time once the road tightens. If you are unsure the camper clears the brush and the crossings, walk that too.
Weekends and holiday weeks fill. A Wednesday in the shoulder season is the Onion Creek people mean when they recommend it. Have a backup bench in mind before you leave town, so a full canyon is a change of plan and not a new campsite carved into the grass.
The creek is not a utility
Wash dishes away from the water, and pack the food bits out. Soap in the current is not a small thing just because the bottle says the soap is gentle. Toilet paper goes in a bag, not under a rock.
Fire restrictions are common around Moab and they apply on evenings that feel cool enough for a fire. A stove is the default. Check the BLM Moab field office before you count on a ring. Stay limits and distance-from-water rules are part of camping here. Read the current sheet. This page is not the regulation.
Be a quiet neighbor
Sound travels in the canyon. Generators and speakers are how a good site becomes the one everyone else remembers. Quiet hours are not a hotel rule out here. They are how dispersed camping survives another busy season.
If the corridor feels overrun, it is. Leave it cleaner than you found it. Lockhart Basin and the other bench roads are the longer version of a Moab week if the canyon is more crowd than you wanted.
Before you go
- Do not drive a crossing when the water is murky.
- Dispersed BLM rules apply: existing sites, stay limits, pack it out.
- Weekends fill. Carry a backup plan.
- Fire restrictions are common. Check before you go.
- The canyon tightens. Large trailers struggle.
Official page: BLM Moab field office
Field notes, October 2026