Our story

About Boat Ramp US

Boat Ramp US is an independent directory of public boat ramps across the United States - built on official USGS, state agency, and federal open data to help boaters find verified launch information before they hit the water. We currently track 441 public boat ramps across 1 states.

It started with a cluttered search

Search "boat ramp near me" and you'll find plenty of results - but look closely and the picture gets messy. Some directories pull in anything Google Places tags as a "point of interest" near water, mixing real launch points with museums, historic sites and even waterfalls. Others rely on crowdsourced map edits with no way to tell whether a ramp still exists, let alone whether it's open today.

We wanted something narrower and more honest: a directory built entirely on data that actually comes from the agencies who manage these ramps, with no guessing about what counts as a "boat ramp" and no pretending we know more than the source data actually says.

Boater checking boat ramp locations on a smartphone near a dock, with a small American flag on a boat in the background

Federal and state open data made it possible

The foundation of this site is the U.S. Geological Survey's national boat ramp inventory - a GPS-verified dataset covering all 50 states, built by cross-referencing state agency records with satellite imagery. It's public domain, free to use, and it's the closest thing to a single authoritative source this country has for boat ramp locations.

On top of that base, we integrate dedicated state-level datasets where they exist and are genuinely richer than the national survey - see Data Sources below for exactly which states and what each one adds.

Who uses Boat Ramp US?

Boaters planning a trip

Checking fee, hours and access before driving out with a trailer.

First-time boat owners

Finding a nearby launch point and knowing what to expect before their first trip.

Anglers and fishing guides

Identifying every public access point on a specific lake or river, not just the popular one.

Researchers and local planners

Looking at public water access coverage across a county, state, or specific waterway.

How Boat Ramp US grew

We started simple: load the national USGS inventory, organize it by state, county, and individual ramp. Over time, we added more.

1

National ramp database

Every USGS-verified ramp gets its own page - name, coordinates, waterbody, county - with a slug that doesn't change even as we add more sources on top.

2

State, county, and waterway hubs

Beyond individual ramps, we built hub pages by state, by county, and by waterway - since a river or lake often spans more than one county, and "nearest ramp" isn't always the same question as "same water."

3

Florida FWC integration

Florida's Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission maintains its own dedicated boat ramp inventory - richer than the national survey, with real launch fees, hours, lane counts, surface type and amenities. We cross-reference it against our existing Florida listings rather than replacing them wholesale.

4

Michigan DNR integration

Michigan's Department of Natural Resources publishes live launch status, detailed parking and restroom counts, pier counts, and separate ADA accessibility flags for piers, parking, pedestrian routes and restrooms - currently the most detailed source we track.

5

Texas Parks & Wildlife integration

Additional coverage for Texas, cross-checked against the state's official public boat ramp inventory.

6

County adjacency data

Using the U.S. Census Bureau's County Adjacency File, every county page links to its real geographic neighbors - not a guess based on distance, which can be wrong for oddly-shaped counties.

7

Editorial ramp descriptions

For select ramps with an official web page, we generate a plain-language description of the access point - written from the source's own page and cited back to it. No filler, no invented details.

What we stand for

No paid placement

No ramp, business, or agency can pay to appear higher in a list or to change its listed status. Ordering is based on distance, name, or verified data - never payment.

Full transparency

Every data source is named on this page, with a link to the original dataset and how often we sync it. Nothing is a black box.

Always current, honestly labeled

We show the exact date each ramp was last checked against its source. If we haven't confirmed something - a fee, an hour, a status - we say "not yet verified" rather than guess.

Sources, not opinions

We don't rate or review ramps ourselves. Everything shown comes from a government agency's own record, cited back to where it came from.

Our methodology

Every ramp on this site starts from a government-published dataset - never a crowdsourced edit, never a guess based on satellite imagery alone. When we add a new state-level source, we go through the same process every time:

Confirm the source is an official agency dataset, not a third-party aggregation.
Check field-level richness and data age before deciding whether it's worth integrating at all - several sources we evaluated (a federal recreation database, a state lands dataset) turned out to be too coarse-grained to trust and were never added.
Match new records against our existing database by location and name, so a ramp already on file gets enriched rather than duplicated.
Only mark a fact as confirmed (a fee, an open/closed status, an amenity) when the source explicitly says so - a blank field is treated as "not yet verified," never assumed to mean "no."
Re-sync on a schedule (see the table below) so listings don't go stale.

Some of our data reflects a one-time national survey (USGS) rather than a live feed - where that's the case, we say so plainly rather than implying a freshness we don't have.

Weather and water quality context

On ramp, county, and waterway pages where it's meaningful, we also show two kinds of context data that sit apart from our core ramp facts, since they come from different agencies and change on a different rhythm:

Current weather, from the National Weather Service (api.weather.gov) - the nearest station's actual current conditions, not a forecast for later in the day.
Water quality, from the EPA's ATTAINS program - the same data behind the EPA's own How's My Waterway tool, summarizing what percentage of a watershed's monitored waters are in good condition versus impaired.

Water quality assessments are a snapshot, not real-time monitoring - conditions in any specific spot can differ from the watershed-wide summary, and can change at any time. We show this data for general reference only; for anything safety-related, check current local or state advisories directly.

Who is behind Boat Ramp US?

Boat Ramp US is developed and maintained by Space Bits, S.L., a technology company based in Manresa, Spain.

Company: Space Bits, S.L.
Tax ID (NIF): ESB64776271
Address: Crta. de Vic 96 1-1, 08241 Manresa, Barcelona (Spain)
Registry: Registre Mercantil de Barcelona, Tom 40.275, foli 0130, full 361.916
Contact: [email protected]

Data sources

Site-wide data last synced July 11, 2026.

Source	Sync frequency	What it adds
USGS National Boat Ramp Inventory	As republished	Base national dataset - name, location, waterbody, county, all 50 states.
FWC Florida Boat Ramp Inventory	Weekly	Fee, hours, lane counts, surface type, amenities, contact info for Florida.
Michigan DNR Boating Access Sites	Weekly	Live launch status, parking & restroom counts, pier count, ADA accessibility for Michigan.
Texas Parks & Wildlife Department	Weekly	Additional ramp coverage for Texas.
U.S. Census Bureau County Adjacency File	As republished	Real geographic neighboring-county links, not distance-based guesses.
EPA ATTAINS	Weekly	Watershed water quality summaries, shown on ramp, county, and waterway pages where available.