Forest Road 160 Dispersed Camping

Excellent place to boondock. Beautifully maintained forest, easy to get to.

The northern part of the road (closest to Jake’s rocks) has a cell signal.

Spent time at the local beach, hiking around Jake’s rocks, and visiting dam.

It might get crowded on weekends, but even, then sites are well spread out.

Only draw back is that my family loves camping near water, a creek or pond. Nothing like that here.

We stayed on 6/20/22 on our way north to NY and enjoyed it so much that we spent 2 more nights (6/23 & 6/24) on our return trip!
As expected, the road is gravel and not always "buttery smooth". Also, it is better to enter it from the northern end than from Brown Run Road. When it is dry, expect to have a lot of dust on your vehicles. There are a few level sites for RV's, but expect to use leveling devices on most sites. (Minus one star, but that is pretty picky.)
There are several trails to hike and bike paths for those more adventurous. We have an inflatable tandem kayak and took it out on the lake for a wonderful day.
There are two "Narrow Rough Roads" that are offshoots that also have a few campsites.
Most people left their sites clean and even "paid it forward" by leaving firewood! There are the exceptions where someone must have left a bag of garbage that the wildlife scattered all over one site (there is NO garbage service, TAKE IT WITH YOU), and another site where someone left "gifts" of used toilet tissue around the area. (Also found a cap on that site that allows the grey tank to be connected to a garden hose... that also is simply wrong. IT IS A SPECIAL PRIVILEDGE TO HAVE FREE DISPERSED CAMPING, PLEASE DON'T ABUSE IT AND HAVE IT TAKEN AWAY.) (Minus one star)

Exactly what Boondocking should be!

Most of the sites are slightly off back from the road giving some privacy. There are a few that are setup for tents with a car by the road, don’t be alarmed by these when you first start up the road, those are really only the first sites.

There are at least 40+ sites up here. I think the last tagged site we saw was 44, and we didn’t even drive the other forest road. We camped on a wed night and there was maybe only 6 other campers total.

Most of the sites have lots of nice shade.

We managed to not even need any leveling blocks in our site.

The sites all appeared to have fairly decent fire pits. The only complaint we had was that someone had been burning garbage in our pit. Took a bag of trash out and two bags of ash. Pay it forward!

The road is dirt, but it is buttery smooth! No washboard, no monster eating holes! Be prepared for a little bit of mud if rains have been recent, they only gravel the road.

Best Boondocking we’ve seen since colorado!

Spent 2 days with my wife boondocking and Mountain Biking at Jakes Rocks with a 30 foot Class C Motorhome.

The dirt road was solid and wide enough. A few potholes. There were several places to turn around if necessary. If it was raining, I might have been concerned, but it was dry and solid.
The sites were very clean and most had fire pits. Some are very big and others tiny.

Phone access was poor, but there is a spot within a 5 minute bike ride.

Not much of a view, but very good access to the bike trails.

This was our first night on a cross country trip in our 13’ Scamp trailer. We arrived on Sept 8 2020 after reading other reviews regarding mention of a bear and decided to take our chances. When we arrived around 4pm, there was only one other site occupied. We set up, had a nice dinner, and went for a walk. While on our walk, the other camper there warned us as she had also spotted a black bear earlier that day. My partner and I were freaked out a bit but made it through the night in one piece! Nice trails, nice sites. Ours had a fire pit. 16 sites total. Would stay again!

Stayed here on our way out west, trying to avoid hotels due to coronavirus. The coordinates brought us to a couple of sites and we had the luxury of choosing the one we liked best out of at least 10. The drives in and out were incredibly scenic. It was May when we stayed and I'm not sure if we were just unlucky, but we did wake up to some sleet accumulated on the ground since it is a ways up a mountain. Would definitely stay here again, hopefully with some better weather!

We first stopped at site 8, what a cesspool as was site 7. Tp and bags and buckets of feces. I spoke to a ranger and it will be cleaned up. Most sites do have some tp. So we moved to site 15, not perfect but very doable. Most sites are filled up by Fri night and empty by 12pm Sunday. Had a mountain lion scream, 300 + lb bear visited regularly but leaves everyone alone, pack of coyotes a bit too close, fox, turkey and a mouse moved in. Any size rig will fit at many sites. No permit needed for a free 14 day stay. No tables, no toilets, do have a fire ring. Phones are glitchy. Did have a night with 2 guys shooting for an hr that began at 2am. In weekdays this place is pretty quiet esp when it gets dark. Most sites are a good distance from each other. Would I camp here again? Maybe.

The drive up the mountain is happily on a paved, at times steep road. At the top, the road turns to hard packed gravel, sweeping through a forested area with multiple sites widely spaced down this road. I am not sure how many sites there are as I took the first, a spacious site with some sunshine penetrating through the opening in the forest canopy.

Footing was sand/dirt with some rocks but flat enough to be easy to drive into. There was a large stone fire pit. The forest is not very dense and it is possible to walk through the forest area around the campsite some 500 feet out in all directions while mostly keeping your camper in view. On the way into the camping area, you will pass Jakes Rocks, a short trail that takes you past a variety of erratics, large boulders left over from retreating glaciers of the last ice age. Also, there is a pretty lookout from Jakes Rocks over the Allegheny River. Jakes Rocks was about 1 mile down the gravel road from the first campsite where I stayed.

The campsite was relatively clean for a dispersed site. Sites were sufficiently well spaced that you felt quite alone except for when cars occasionally drove past, generally quite fast. I did have decent signal there on my Canadian cell plan with Bell Canada.

I found this site by asking at the ranger station where the dispersed camping was. They gave me a list of forest roads that they said had some dispersed sites. It was a fairly long list which suggested to me that there may be lots of other areas with free camping in this national forest.