Home › About & data

About & data

Federal Cabins & Lookouts is a directory of rentable structures on U.S. federal public land — cabins, fire-lookout towers, yurts, and overnight shelters — built from the Recreation.gov RIDB data export pulled November 5, 2026.

Inclusion rules

A listing appears when the source data classifies at least one of its overnight rental units as a cabin (electric or nonelectric), lookout, yurt, or overnight shelter (696 listings), or when the facility listing itself is a single reservable cabin or lookout named as such (30 listings, including most Alaska public-use cabins, whose units the source codes generically). Day-use buildings coded as cabins in the source (kitchens, lecture halls) never count. Name-matched listings with no reservation path in the source data are left out entirely.

Honesty rules

Nothing here is guessed or filled in from other listings. Fees are the agency's own published wording, never converted into invented prices. There is no structured season field in the source for these rentals, so this site shows none — season information appears only inside the agency's own description text. Coordinates, capacity, and amenities are shown only when the export records them for that listing.

Counts

726 listings · 1321 typed rental units · agencies: U.S. Forest Service (653), National Park Service (36), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (25), Bureau of Land Management (10), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2).

Reservations

Facility details come from federal recreation data and may be out of date — this site takes no reservations and shows no live availability; confirm details and book through Recreation.gov or the managing agency. This site is a directory only: the booking button on each listing goes to that facility's page on Recreation.gov.

Publisher. Federal Cabins & Lookouts is published from Alaska by Cabin Fever Media, as one of a small fleet of independent public-data sites. It is not affiliated with Recreation.gov or any federal agency.

Changes & notes

November 12, 2026 — Launched. The directory went live at federalcabins.com with 726 listings, graduated from a reviewed prototype. Listings that are also federal campgrounds link to their pages on our sister site, Fed Camp Finder.