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The Layers menu

Help guide · Updated June 25, 2026

What this is. The Layers menu is mission control for what shows on the map. It's where you pick the state you're working in, switch the basemap, and toggle the data overlays — public land, trails, vehicle routes, your own captures, campsites, and more. A few overlays open a filter panel so you can dial in which categories appear. It's the first toolbar button on the left for a reason.

Open the menu

Tap the Layers button at the far left of the toolbar — the stacked-squares icon.

Layers menu open showing State (Colorado), Basemap (Street/Topo 3D/Grid), and a list of toggleable overlay layers including Public land ownership, Trails (national), Vehicle routes, My routes, My spots, My photos, Campsites, Facilities (camping), and Recreation Areas.
The full menu — State at top, Basemap in the middle, and the overlay stack below. Layer toggles persist between sessions; the menu remembers your last setup.
1

State

Picks which U.S. state's data the app is currently focused on. Trail, route, and land-ownership overlays only load data for the selected state — switching states swaps the entire data set behind the scenes. All 50 states are in the dropdown.

State controls more than the overlays. The state also drives offline tile downloads, the search scope used by Find a trail and Find a spot ("100 routes in viewport in CO"), and what gets cached for offline use. Switch states before you switch contexts, not after.
2

Basemap

Picks the background the overlays are drawn on top of. Three options:

Topo 3D basemap showing dramatic terrain relief with land-ownership colors overlaid — orange BLM, green National Forest, purple State Park near Buena Vista, Colorado.
Topo 3D under a Land ownership overlay. The relief shading shows ridges and valleys at a glance; the ownership colors tell you who manages the land you're looking at.
3

The overlay layers

Below the basemap, each row is a separate overlay you can toggle. Five layers have a filter button on the right — the sliders icon — that opens a dedicated panel for narrowing what shows.

Public land ownership

Color-coded polygons for who manages every parcel — National Forest, BLM, National Park, State Park, Wildlife Refuge, Tribal, Private, and many more. Powered by USGS PAD-US. Essential for knowing whether the spot you want to camp is legally open to dispersed camping.

Has filter

Trails (national)

National Forest trail lines — hiking paths, equestrian, bike, OHV. Filter by who the trail is open to (Hike, Bike, Pack/saddle, ATV…) and by who maintains it (USFS, NPS, State, etc.).

Has filter

Vehicle routes

Drivable lines — National Forest System roads, BLM roads, and MVUM routes, with surface and passability info. Filter to just dirt roads, just paved, just routes a passenger car can manage, etc.

Has filter

My routes

Lines you've drawn yourself — trails you traced or recorded with GPS. Filter by Dictionary type to show only your hiking tracks (or only your driving tracks). See Map tools for how to add to this layer.

Has filter

My spots

Points you've dropped yourself — campsites, trailheads, waypoints, anything. Same filter as My routes, by Dictionary type.

Has filter

My photos

Your geolocated photos, clustered on the map. Tap a cluster to open the carousel. If you've imported .campound bundles from someone else, a Filter bundles button appears so you can show or hide imports per source.

Has filter

Campsites

Individual campsites that exist in Recreation.gov's reservation system, pinned on the map. Distinct from Find a spot — that finder queries availability per site; this layer just shows the sites' existence.

Facilities (camping)

Whole campgrounds and other parent facilities from Recreation.gov, drawn as larger markers than individual sites.

Recreation Areas

Top-level recreation areas (National Park, National Forest unit, BLM area) from Recreation.gov, with the area's name and boundary on hover.

The filter panels

Tap the sliders icon next to an enabled layer (it only appears when the layer is on) to open that layer's filter panel. Each panel floats over the map — it stays put while you pan or zoom, and you can minimize it to a header pill or close it entirely. The reset arrow at the top right of each panel restores the layer's defaults.

Trails filter

Trails (national) filter showing OPEN TO checkboxes (Hike, Pack/saddle, XC ski, Motorcycle, 4WD, Bike, Snowshoe, Paddle, ATV, Snowmobile) and MAINTAINED BY swatches (USFS, NPS, State, Private, BLM, USFWS, Local) — all currently selected.
Two filter axes: OPEN TO (what uses are allowed) and MAINTAINED BY (which agency manages it). Uncheck a use to hide all trails that allow it.

Useful for narrowing the trail clutter to just what matters to you — uncheck Motorcycle, ATV, 4WD, and Snowmobile to see just non-motorized trails; uncheck everything but Hike to see just walkable paths.

Land ownership filter

Land ownership filter showing categories grouped by FEDERAL (National Forest, Wilderness, BLM, etc.), TRIBAL, STATE (State Park, etc.), and LOCAL & PRIVATE — with color swatches per category.
The land-ownership filter splits parcels into FEDERAL, TRIBAL, STATE, and LOCAL & PRIVATE. Each row has a color swatch matching how that category draws on the map. Bold text = currently visible; muted text = currently hidden.

Click a row to toggle that category. The color swatch is the same one painted on the map, so the legend doubles as a key — if you see purple polygons on the map, find the purple swatch in the filter to see what it is.

Vehicle routes filter

Same shape as Trails: OPEN TO (motorcycle, ATV, 4WD, passenger car, etc.) and SURFACE (paved, dirt, gravel). Useful for filtering down to "roads my Subaru can handle" or "everything I could ride on my dirt bike."

My routes / My spots filter

Filters by Dictionary type. If you have a hundred saved points but only want to see your "Fishing hole" points right now, this is where you turn the others off without losing them.

My photos — bundle filter

This filter only appears when you've imported .campound bundles from someone else. It lists each bundle separately so you can show or hide an entire import at once — useful when a friend sent over a trip's worth of photos and you want to scope the map to just yours, or just theirs.

Tips

Less is more. Turn off layers you're not using. Vehicle routes and Trails together can crowd the map in heavily-mapped areas — flip off whichever isn't relevant to today's outing.
The filter is per-layer, not global. The Trails filter only affects Trails. The Vehicle routes filter only affects Vehicle routes. They don't talk to each other, even though their structure is identical.
Topo 3D needs signal once. The relief tiles aren't cached for offline use the way the Street basemap is. If you're heading somewhere with no signal, pre-load tiles via Offline data in the More menu, or expect to fall back to the Grid basemap.
Filter dismissal vs. layer toggle. Closing a filter panel (×) just dismisses the panel — the layer stays visible with its current filter state. To actually hide a layer, uncheck it in the Layers menu.