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Free Boundary Waters Canoe Area GPS Data: Campsites and Portages

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The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is a million acre wilderness area in northern Minnesota established to protect pristine boreal forests and historic and recreational canoe routes. It has over 1,000 lakes and 2,000 campsites. If you use a GPS unit, finding GPS data for BWCA campsites and portages was difficult. Now, you can get that GPS data for free. If you’ve read my Free Garmin Topo Maps article you know the basic procedure. If you don’t here it is:

bwca campsites on map
An overlay of the BWCA GPS data on the MN map. Garmin's software can't overlay two maps so I had to do it this way to show the data, but your Garmin GPS can display both.

You need to download several maps to make this work:

To install:

  1. Download both of the files.
  2. Run both of the files. They are both .exe files, so on Windows, they will automagically install and you can find them in both Garmin BaseCamp and in Garmin MapSource.
  3. Hook your GPS up to your computer and install them according to the instructions for the computer program you’re using. Essentially, select the map, highlight the area and push a button. Afterward you’re good-to-go.

This is a great resource for canoeists who use GPS units in the BWCA, but it’s not a substitute for good compass and navigation skills. If you don’t have a GPS unit and are itch’n to buy one, consider the Garmin eTrex 20 Worldwide Handheld GPS Navigator. It has a color screen, it’s expandable and it uses AA batteries to get 20 hours of battery life. It weighs 5 oz with the batteries.

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Bryan Hansel is a freelance writer, award-winning photographer and a former American Canoe Association L4 Open Water Coastal Kayaking Instructor. His home port is on Lake Superior in Grand Marais, Minnesota. He also teaches photography workshops.

7 Comments

  • Mark Dallmann

    Being completely new to the GPS world and pretty much technologically bankrupt, I am wondering if I can download these to my Mac to then install in my soon-to-arrive Garmin 62s. Thanks in advance for any help!

      • randall

        I’ll check out that site. I know that the formats are different, I’ll probably have to figure out a way to change the garmin format to that of magellan and the get it into the magellan mapsend program to upload them. A pain for sure. It doesn’t really matter because I have a garmin etrex vista and they uploaded to it just fine.

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