Iowa Public Lands

0.3% of Iowa is federal land: 99,698 of its 35,860,480 acres (2024 data). The largest federal land manager in Iowa is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with 75,803 acres, 0.2% of the state. This guide covers 87 state parks, 2 National Park Service units, and 6 national wildlife refuges.

Explore Iowa public lands by type

Iowa public land map

  • National parks, recreation areas and monuments (NPS)
  • National wildlife refuges (FWS)
  • State parks
Land managed by (switch layers on or off)

Land ownership: USGS PAD-US 4.1, dissolved by manager and simplified (parcels under about 2 square km not shown). Unit boundaries simplified. Not for navigation or legal boundaries.

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List of all 95 places on this map87 state parks · 2 national parks, recreation areas and monuments (nps) · 6 national wildlife refuges (fws)

State parks (87)

National parks, recreation areas and monuments (NPS) (2)

National wildlife refuges (FWS) (6)

Who manages Iowa's land

Agency Acres Share of Iowa
Bureau of Land Management 0 0%
U.S. Forest Service 0 0%
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 75,803 0.2%
National Park Service 2,670 0%
Department of Defense 21,225 0.1%
All federal land 99,698 0.3%

Source: Congressional Research Service, Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data (R42346), 2024 data, checked 2026-09-30.

Camping on Iowa public land

State parks

5 of Iowa's state parks have developed campgrounds on record; compare them in the Iowa state parks table.

Common questions

0.3% of Iowa is federal land: 99,698 of its 35,860,480 acres (2024 data).
The largest federal land manager in Iowa is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with 75,803 acres, 0.2% of the state.
This guide lists 87 Iowa state parks and recreation areas, 5 of them with camping on record.

The sentences on this page are generated by software from the sourced records above, not written by hand. How this content is made.