ATV friendly states

[destey]

I'm not quite 30 and ready to start over. Where is everyone from and how do you like your state, atv-wise? Where I'm from ATVs are hated, regulated, and things are looking less good each day. not a big fan of: Require title/registration,, Safety course and the like.

Trail system in your state?

[CJM]

I live in NJ and have ridden in PA a bit. PA allows you to ride on alot of thier state forest trails, they have TONS of parks, you can ride on coal mines if you get a permit from the owners of the mines, etc.

Title and reg is easy apparently, im still trying to get NJ to gimme a registration and if all else fails Im going to PA for it.

[Pappy]

I'm in WV but close to PA and MD.

WV- depends on the county. The eastern panhandle counties vary widely. No public riding areas period. Get out of the panhandle and its better but you have to go south (think hatfield McCoy area) for trails.

PA is one of the largest states as far as ATV ownership is concerned. Many public options for trails and such.

MD-dont waste your time

[dns1764]

stay the f*** out of eastern mass. we have nothing. but the far western part has a few parks. cant say ive been yet though

[aDviSol2y]

Check Oregon out!!

http://www.oohva.org/pages/map.html

You do not need to register.
You do not need a title.
All you need, is to take a 1 1/2 hour FREE safty course online (Just implemented in the last 2 years) and get an $11.00 ATV sticker for your bike. The sticker is good for 2 years.
Then, respect the land! If you don't, go back to where you came from!

[ZBlaster]

Georgia is pretty good. Don't have to purchase any type of sticker, or registration or anything. Plenty of places to ride statewide, I have atleast 20 options within 1.5 hours. Several racing bodies put on series in state or close by.

[liex21]

I don't know about upstate NY but DO NOT come to long island there is only i think 3 tracks two are tiny and then other one is going to be really nice but none are open to public strictly membership.

[YOURADHERE]

Im in South Louisiana and we're pretty much unregulated. Within 2 hours(at the most) of me is a small set of dunes(Forest Hill, LA), a couple trail systems in National forest, several MX tracks, etc. Within 3-5 hours of me is even more MX tracks, another set of dunes(Wiggins, MS), Highlifter Off Road Park, ATVCCS series, the place that host Planet Sand Drags every year(Gilbert, LA). We've basically got places to fit pretty much any genre/niche of riding you're into. Mud, sand, drags, MX, XC, etc.

[yellowzo3]

DO NOT COME TO NJ.

There is HONESTLY like 1 legal spot to ride in the entire state, unless you have your own property.

There are 3 "exhibition" type races throughout the year (one at Englishtown and 2 in Wildwood on the beach). That is ALL we have except Atco.

If you ask me the midwest seems like it would be better as there are farms and such and definitely more undeveloped land to ride on. I dunno, I've always got the vibe that people in the midwest (for the most part) "accept" riding quads and stuff as part of the lifestyle. Hopefully some people will confirm whether I'm right or wrong.

[CNC_guy]

Kentucky is ATV friendly for the most part. You just have to put up with bad drivers here.......right Pappy?;)

[MX MaNiAc 06]

PA is pretty good about quads. I'm from western PA. All the local tracks around me allow quads, there is a bunch of trails and i never hear any type of fuss from my neighbors about the noise or dust from my track.

[buck440]

dirtwheels had an article about the most friendly atv towns not too long ago. some of the towns you can ride around them to restraints and right up to the pumps.

[destey]

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm hearing a lot of good things about PA. Plus its only a few states over which seems like less drastic of a chage. One of the guys I work with mentioned Colorado. He said I could ride for days in some places and not hit the same trail twice.

How's land prices in PA? One of the big reasons for leaving VT is I can't afford any land as it was run up by out of staters.

[tayyo789]

x2 on Oregon. It's a long ways for you to go, but there's places to ride pretty much everywhere except around Portland. Plus we've got the most scenic dunes in the country. Pretty much can't go wrong here

[Ichoptop]

Colorado, Rocky Mountains, 30 bucks a year for a forest registration and there are tons of places to ride. They just passed the noise reg but as long as you arent a d-bag the Park service leaves you alone.

[CJM]

Pa land prices depends on the area, i wayne county where I have a cabin 20 years back it was 1k an acre, now its 10k per.

This is the middle of NOWHERE, basically tons of dirtroads and nearest real town is 12 miles +

[cdrookie]

i'll sell you my place in NW PA for $104,000. taxes are $600/yr.

[destey]

Originally posted by CJM
Pa land prices depends on the area, i wayne county where I have a cabin 20 years back it was 1k an acre, now its 10k per.

This is the middle of NOWHERE, basically tons of dirtroads and nearest real town is 12 miles +

I was hoping for a good chunk of land. I'm not a guy who wants a big house, a little shack will do, but i like acres. Grew up on a farm.

Here, a 3 bedroom 5 yr old house with 1 acre goes for over $200k. Its just rediculous.

cdrookie, how many acres?

[cdrookie]

only 1.4 and it's not a nice 1.4...

acres = $$$$$ just about anywhere. for 200k though you could get a decent chunk in certain parts.

[CJM]

5 acres usually is about 50-100k. It depends totally on the area and land values. Like I said, 20 years ago it was less than a grand an acre, now its like 8-12k or better.

I have 20 acres and a small cabin thats less than 900sqft. Its no good for anything but hunting on, way to woodsy to even make trails on without a LOT of work.

We do ok with it tho, its a 2nd home and due to the fact we have it logged we get a forestry discount as well as a farm discount b/c we own 20 acres. Taxes are like 500 a year cause of that.

But like I said its in Wayne county an hour from lake wallenpaupack and its nowhere. I mean the only thing to do besides hunt, do redneck/hillbilly stuff is go to town and go hang out at the walmart and home depot they built like 5 years ago.

One last thing to remember is if you want this as your residence consider finding a job out there is SLIM to none unless you want to travel to a city.

I'd love to get out to Oregon to ride but definately not live there. Florida IMO is pretty offroad friendly. Theres a lot of tracks and some cool places and state parks to ride. As far as riding on roads obviously the police in more populated areas dont like that but some counties have it where you can legally ride on unpaved roads that have a speed limit no more than 30MPH which is nice cause theres usally trails in areas like that.

[stoopidbot]

Colorado is amazing, tons of MX tracks near denver and the trails are great.

I love this state but I wish they had ATV racing other than MX.

[aDviSol2y]

Originally posted by destey


Here, a 3 bedroom 5 yr old house with 1 acre goes for over $200k. Its just rediculous.

rediculous? I paid 193k for a 3 bedroom .25 acre lot here. But the crappy thing is, I've already lost 30k in value in just 2 years. Good investment this was. :confused: Now instead of 5 years here, I'm looking at probably 10. Which really pisses me off. I hate living in town. I grew up in BFE, and loved it.

[destey]

Originally posted by aDviSol2y
rediculous? I paid 193k for a 3 bedroom .25 acre lot here. But the crappy thing is, I've already lost 30k in value in just 2 years. Good investment this was. :confused: Now instead of 5 years here, I'm looking at probably 10. Which really pisses me off. I hate living in town. I grew up in BFE, and loved it.

Ouch. Its odd about value. I wouldn't pay more than 60k for that house, but someone else would probably pay over 200. When it comes to numerical values of that size, it loses proportion with the value of what a dollar is and how long / effort it takes to create a dollar.

Its like our representatives, they throw a billion here and a billion there like its passing a dish at a dinner table "here, would you like some of this?"

Group land purchases are interesting. Over at ar15.com they were talking about 40 acres for $10k, they were going to buy a town and annoint each person in the group buy to be a police officer. Since they'd have control of the local govt, they could set any law that wouldn't involve federal intervention. Or not enforce laws. Of course there's always the Feds, but most things are local juridiction. The main idea was for everyone to have machine guns. I think the idea got shut down because states wouldn't recognise the LEO of the town and feds would have to approve machine guns transfers to LEO anyways. But the group buy might still be on, not sure.

But it had the side effect of educating me on land purchases and how if enough people got together each person ends up with a large plot of land and pay like $10-20k. There's actually a larger number of whole towns for sale than you would think.

[kbnorth99]

I live in Northern CA. We gripe a lot but we really have quite a few places to ride. We have state run SVRA and OHVA's (State Vehicle Recreation Area)(Off Highway Vehicle Area) as well as Forestry land and BLM land. We have a lot of tracks around here but the dirt bike people tend to whine and complain about the quads knocking down the ruts in the corners, so most of the tracks don't allow quads unless its for a race or your rent the track for the day. All in all we really don't have it too bad. We have heavy guidelines on registration and sound levels but that's no big deal. Just be responsible and its not an issue.

Now that being said I wouldn't recommend moving to CA. We have one of the worst economies, our housing market is still dropping, we have horrible schools and there are waaaaaaay to many people here that are only concerned with their image.

I used to live on Colorado and the off-road opportunities were huge there. Thousands of acres of state managed land was pretty much open for any type of off-road use. I used spend all day in my Bronco driving around trails and never see the same place twice.

Good luck in your move.

[kbnorth99]

Originally posted by aDviSol2y
rediculous? I paid 193k for a 3 bedroom .25 acre lot here. But the crappy thing is, I've already lost 30k in value in just 2 years. Good investment this was. :confused: Now instead of 5 years here, I'm looking at probably 10. Which really pisses me off. I hate living in town. I grew up in BFE, and loved it.

I bought 3.5 years ago. I have a 1600 sqft house 4bd 2 ba on .5 acre. I paid $350K and it has lost about $100k in value. I may never be able to leave.

[CJM]

^ Pretty much why I wouldnt ever live in CA, NJ isnt much better really.

Im moving to PA or down south or west when I finally leave. Few more years of college and maybe Ill land a real job, course at 26 I should already have one of those..

[GTRider256]

New Jersey r atv nazis. No where to trail ride at all and like CJM I was also denied a registration because I didn't have enough proof they were mine even though I have my dealership papers with all the info on them from where I financed them. New Jersey arm pit of the world!!!!

[wilkin250r]

Most of the Western states are pretty good, except California. There isn't a whole lot for racing except the desert series in Nevada, and the Worcs series.

But aside from racing, most of the western states are REALLY friendly towards ATVs. Nevada has no registration, and lot and lots and lots (did I mentions lots?) of open land and trails, as do many of the western states. I've known people that have ridden trails from Nevada all the way to Idaho without riding on a road.

[sexysilverado45]

Kansas is awesome. We have a pretty awesome atv mx series that started this year. The Syracuse sand dunes, and little Sahara right across the border in Oklahoma. Also no tittles, registration, any of that non sense. a million acres to ride with farmers permission. Also farm land around were I live in central Kansas is around 1-1250 an acre. Awesome state as far as riding.

[kbnorth99]

Anybody on here from Nebraska?

[johnnyquad17]

I lived in So Cal for years and we moved out to Colorado a couple years ago. I love it here!

Hey stoopidbot,
Check out corcs.net they just started a great series for quads and bikes. Next race is this weekend. It is a GP style 1 and a half hour race. Lots of fun!!

[Aarons 01 400EX]

IL- I have my quad titled and registered. Some riding places say you need it, but no one asks for it. There are a couple places close(2 hours) to me that require you to pay a fee. One place requires a DNR sticker :rolleyes: because it is near the Shawnee national forest. I go to Missouri to St. Joes(aka Flat River) where you pay $3 and you need a helmet and flag to ride. There is lots of farm/wooded areas to ride with permission in IL.


Home values are fairly decent in southern IL. I bought a 3bdr, 2 bath, 1600sqft ranch with a 1600sqft basement(unfinished, but that's where my man cave is) 2 car garage, and .33 acre for $130,000 in 2003. Value as of 3 months ago was $160,000 because of the market. Real estate taxes are expensive if you are in the city or if you have more acreage. I was paying $3000/yr and it dropped to $2700/yr. We were looking at $300,000 homes with a min. of 3 acres last week and taxes are anywhere from $4k-$7k.

[finsteratv]

im in Oregon and about 45min tops out of hillsboro where i live you can be near sandlake (small dune area) and even closer in the mountain range are tooooooons of trails and OHV systems..im planning on starting some racing up there this summer. As i move south theres more and more places to ride then i hit the OREGON DUNES baby :macho fun stuff. ride and ride and ride and ride.

[nkillian9]

Man Arkansas is alright, pretty much ride any woods with no bother we have a great harescramble series, and decent mx tracks that allow quads, plus just right next door to the tqra mx series, land aint to bad i paid 75k for a 3 bedroom 2 bath home built in 1990 with 5 1/2 acres, home aint that big like 1700 sqft but its plenty for wife and daughter and me, plus all dirt roads are legal to ride on here as well,

[trailhouseowner]

Hands down, southern WV is the most ATV friendly place in the Eastern US.

[jesshamner]

Kentucky has a lot of good places to ride. Eastern Kentucky has trails like Hatfield McCoy, Western Kentucky has a great place to ride. Central and northern kentucky is home to a couple decent parks. And Hatfield McCoy is just across the border. There is a small area to ride between Louisville and Cincy, OH. And 2 hours away in Indiana, there are 2 parks to ride. Of course there is Daniel Boone MX, Ballance Moto X, Earlywine's Indoor, and various other mx tracks.

Indiana allows county road riding in a lot of counties with just an OHV registration which is $30 for 3 years.

[mkh155]

Maine is a very friendly ATV state...So come here and visit :cool:

[OldGuyonaQuad]

New Jersey is one of the few places on the globe where communism still exists!!

LIke CJM said it all depends on where you wanna live. If you are on the fence about Wayne county area the "Wayne county Fair" will be a deal breaker for you :D

Unless you are independantly wealthy you will need to consider employment prospects. My experienxe is, where your dollar goes further, your opportunities are fewer. GL with the move I love how you priorotize when considering your options.