Thorne River · U.S. Forest Service (public domain)

Tongass National Forest

The agency’s national route data maps 1,590 miles of road and 449 miles of motorized trail open to vehicles on this forest. Below is what each class of vehicle may use, and where that data runs out.

1,590road miles with a mapped locationmeasured from the lines

449trail miles with a mapped locationmeasured from the lines

3%of mapped miles are seasonalnot open year round

436trail miles with no mapped locationof 928 the agency records

Hover any line for what it is and who can drive it

Loading routes…

Roads in gold, motorized trails in green, the forest boundary dashed, on the USGS topographic base. Zoom in for road numbers and names. Tap a vehicle type and the routes it may not use go grey. The lines are simplified for drawing; the forest's official Motor Vehicle Use Map is the legal one.

The figures, from the agency’s own data

What each vehicle class can use

These are miles where the Motor Vehicle Use Map affirmatively designates the class as open. A blank value in the source data means the class is not designated on that segment. It is not the same as a closure, and no closed figure is published here because the data cannot support one.

Vehicle class	Road miles	Trail miles	Total
ATV	1,437	449	1,887
Motorcycle	1,437	449	1,887
Other wheeled OHV	1,437	449	1,887
Tracked OHV under 50 in	1,437	449	1,887
Other OHV under 50 in	1,437	449	1,887
Passenger vehicle	1,582	0	1,582
High-clearance vehicle	1,582	0	1,582
4WD over 50 in	1,437	71	1,509
2WD over 50 in	1,437	71	1,509

What the national data holds for this forest

Drawn routes reach about 23 percent of this forest’s area in the national dataset.

Ranger district	Road records	On the map	Motorized trail records	On the map
Thorne Bay Ranger District	276	276	287	145
Sitka Ranger District	45	45	97	49
Petersburg Ranger District	103	103	10	5
Wrangell Ranger District	69	69	30	16
Yakutat Ranger District	32	32	52	26
Ketchikan - Misty Ranger District	47	47	27	14
Hoonah Ranger District	44	44	30	15
Juneau Ranger District	31	31	26	13
District not named	none	none	16	16

Counts are records in the USDA Forest Service Enterprise Data Warehouse MVUM service, roads and trails layers, harvested 21 August 2026. “On the map” means the record carries geometry a map can draw. A district with no road records is not a district without roads; it is one the agency has not published to this dataset.

Why a route with no mapped location matters

A route on this forest is legal to drive only if it is on the forest’s Motor Vehicle Use Map. Every route the Forest Service designates gets a recorded length in its database; only some get a location anyone can pull up. A route with no location can’t be looked up in that data, can’t be proved legal from it, and can be left off the next map without anyone noticing. The proposal would make that next map the legal record.

436 miles of motorized trail on this forest, trails designated for ATVs, dirt bikes or side-by-sides, have no mapped location in the agency's national route data. Those routes are in the agency's route database with a length and, in many cases, live vehicle-class designations, but no location, so no map built on that data can show them. That is 47 percent of this forest's recorded motorized trail mileage. It is a count of that national data, which the proposal would make the legal record, and not an audit of this forest's own printed map.

This map is being rewritten, and comment is open

On 24 August 2026 the Forest Service proposed rewriting 36 CFR parts 212 and 261, the rules that produced this map. Today a route on the Tongass National Forest is closed to vehicles unless the forest studied it and put it on the map. The proposal flips that: open unless someone documents a reason to close it. It also removes the national rules that tell a forest supervisor to weigh damage to soil, water and wildlife, and conflict with other visitors, before a route goes in.

That change lands here in a specific way. The proposal would also make digital maps the authoritative source for what is designated, and 436 miles of this forest's motorized trail have no mapped location in that data at all. A route with no location is a route that’s hard to defend, hard to prove you may ride, and easy for the next map to leave out.

Public comment ran through docket FS-2026-0100 on regulations.gov until 23 September 2026. Comments that name a forest and say what the writer knows about it are the ones the agency has to answer. You know this one.

Comments closed 23 September 2026

Write your comment about the Tongass National Forest Talking points and a starter comment What the rule change does

Three minutes, in your own words. Your letter carries this forest's 436 miles of motorized trail that have no mapped location in the agency's national route data, because a comment that names a place is one the agency has to answer.

Share this forest Bluesky X Facebook

When the rule itself lands, we will tell you

One email when the Forest Service files the proposed rule, and when a comment window opens on the public lands you use. Nothing else.

No spam, and we never sell the list.

Method. Figures for Tongass National Forest from the USDA Forest Service Enterprise Data Warehouse MVUM service, layers 1 and 2, harvested 21 August 2026. "Mapped" miles are measured from published geometry. "Recorded" miles come from the agency's route-length attribute and exist whether or not the route has been digitized. The two are different measures and are never added together. This page is not a legal travel document; the official MVUM for this forest is.