About this place
Battle Creek runs through a narrow canyon 200 feet deep, and it meanders a great deal.
The walls are rhyolite, nearly continuous and vertical, about an eighth of a mile apart.
Over the next 20 miles the canyon widens to no more than three eighths of a mile and deepens to as much as 500 feet.
Between the cliffs and the stream there is thick growth: willow, chokecherry, dogwood, alder, rose, currant, sedges and grasses.
Experienced boaters can float it. It also makes a fine walk for anyone floating the Owyhee River.
The facts
- Cost
- Free to camp
- Roads around it
- Recorded as four-wheel drive
- Type
- Open area. Camp anywhere within it
- Managed by
- Bureau of Land Management
The roads around this place are not maintained for a regular car. That comes from the Bureau of Land Management, who record the kind of vehicle that uses each route. Those records cover the roads nearby. They do not cover the last stretch in to the campsite, and nobody has checked that part. Treat this as a warning. We are not promising what you will find when you get there. If you have driven it, tell us what it was like and we will say so here.
Getting there
It runs from the meeting with the Owyhee River as far as the edge of the Owyhee River Wilderness, in southwest Idaho.
Coordinates 42.3825, -116.3661111
Open in Google Maps Agency page
Nearest town and supplies
- Owyhee, NV Directions
Owyhee is big enough that you’d normally expect fuel and somewhere to buy food. Nobody from here has been to check, so don’t count on it if you’re running low.
Have you been here?
Fees and access change, and the records do not always keep up. If you have been, tell us what you found.
Thank you, that is recorded. It helps the next person.
Add road notes for this site
The thing we cannot get from any government record is what the drive in is actually like. If you have done it, this is the most useful thing you can leave behind. We read everything before it appears, and we print a first name with it if you give one.
Thank you. A person will read it before it goes on the page.
Where this information comes from
The description on this page is ours. The facts in it, and the fee and facility details below it, come from the Bureau of Land Management’s own records, read in August 2026.