Eldorado National Forest

Recreational Activities: Recreation Residences

WHAT IS A RECREATION RESIDENCE?

The Forest Service Recreation Residence program gives private citizens the opportunity to own a single-family cabin in designated areas on the National Forests. They are commonly called "summer homes" or "recreation cabins". These privately owned cabins (improvements) are located within formally established "tracts" on "lots" designated for that purpose and are authorized and administered under the terms and conditions of a special use authorization (SUA) called a permit. The individual owns the improvements but not the land. The permit requires the payment of an annual rental fee based upon fair market value of the land, not including improvements, as determined by an appraisal.

• 15,570 recreation residences occupy National Forest System lands throughout the country.
• 6,314 are in the Pacific Southwest region (California).
• 975 are on the Eldorado National Forest.

For details regarding the forest management of recreation residences, the Region 5 Supplement 2709.11-2000-1 of the Forest Service Handbook is available on our Regional Forest Service web page.

FOREST PLANNING

The revision process for the Eldorado National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan will begin in 2007. Land allocation and future use will be reviewed and modified at that time. Public input will be welcomed during that process.

SAMPLE SPECIAL USE PERMIT

To review a sample Term Special Use Permit for Recreation Residences, click on the link below.

Download the: FS-2700-5a (8/99) form (pdf)

PDF FILES

In order to serve you better, the Eldorado National Forest web site uses PDF technology. The PDF file format allows us to save offical documents, announcements, maps and brochures into one common format that is downloadable by anyone. This format can be viewed within your browser, or for best results, printed out on your home printer. Any printout that you make using our PDF files will look exactly like our originals! It's like we mailed you the documents directly, except that you didn't have to wait for our delays and the mail! You can save the PDF file to your computer for later viewing, and you can print as many copies as you want.

PDF does have one requirement: viewer/plug-in software. This software allows your browser to be able to "understand" PDF; without it your browser wouldn't know PDF from Smokey Bear!

That brings us to another reason for using PDF: the viewer/plug-in software is FREE, and may even be on your computer already! To download the software now, one free source is the Adobe Acrobat Reader site.