Camping used to mean sleeping on the ground, fighting with a tent zipper in the dark, and waking up with a pine cone imprinted on your back. Glamping has changed all of that.
Short for glamorous camping, it’s the art of spending the night in nature without sacrificing the things that make a hotel stay genuinely comfortable — think plush beds, private hot tubs, gourmet meals, and views that no four-walled room could ever compete with. The United States is spectacularly well-suited to this kind of travel, with landscapes ranging from desert canyons to old-growth forests to coastal bluffs, and a growing number of operators who have figured out exactly how to make the most of them.
Here is a list of the 15 most luxurious glamping locations in the US, each one offering something that goes well beyond a tent and a sleeping bag.
Dunton River Camp, Colorado
Dunton River Camp stands as a sister property to the famous Dunton Hot Springs, located in a remote area of the Dolores River Canyon in southwestern Colorado. The camp sets up a handful of beautifully outfitted canvas tents along the riverbank each summer, with hand-crafted furniture, down bedding, and private outdoor soaking tubs fed by geothermal spring water.
The canyon walls create a spectacular evening display of red and orange hues, while the distance from the town to the area provides a complete view of the night sky.
Sorrel River Ranch, Utah
Situated 15 miles from Arches National Park on the Colorado River, Sorrel River Ranch offers opulent tent accommodations set against a red-rock desert landscape that appears to have been created by a film production crew. The glamping tents are fully equipped with luxurious bedding, wooden floors, and private balconies with views of the water.
The resort is situated on 240 acres of riverside land. This is as much a resort experience as a wilderness one, with amenities including horseback riding, guided river floats, and a full-service spa.
AutoCamp Russian River, California
AutoCamp has built a reputation for turning Airstream trailers into genuinely stylish accommodations, and the Russian River location in Sonoma County is among its best. The custom Airstreams are fitted with hotel-quality linens, designer fixtures, and private bathrooms, parked beneath a canopy of redwoods that filters the light into something almost cathedral-like.
The property sits minutes from some of California’s finest wineries, which means the evening options extend well beyond watching the stars from your deck — though that’s worth doing too.
Paws Up Resort, Montana
Spread across 37,000 acres of wilderness in the Blackfoot River Valley, Paws Up is one of the most ambitious glamping operations in the country. The resort’s luxury tent camps are positioned throughout the property in settings that include riverside meadows and elevated forest clearings, each camp serviced by a dedicated steward who handles everything from fireside cocktails to s’mores on demand.
Activities range from fly fishing and white-water rafting to falconry and cattle drives, and the whole operation runs with a level of polish that puts many conventional luxury hotels to shame.
Clayoquot Wilderness Resort, accessible from Washington State
Technically located just across the border in British Columbia, Clayoquot Wilderness Resort is reachable by floatplane from Seattle and draws heavily from the Pacific Northwest glamping market. The resort’s white canvas prospector tents are furnished with Persian rugs, antique furniture, and wood-burning stoves, set within an ancient temperate rainforest beside the Bedwell River.
It operates on an all-inclusive model, with meals prepared from scratch, guided wilderness expeditions, and a genuine, rather than decorative, commitment to environmental stewardship.
Collective Yellowstone, Wyoming
Positioned just outside the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park, Collective Yellowstone offers a base camp experience that makes the world’s first national park feel genuinely accessible, without the usual logistical headaches. The canvas safari tents are spacious and thoughtfully outfitted, with wood-burning stoves for the cool mountain nights and private decks for watching wildlife move through the valley below.
Having a knowledgeable guide on hand to help navigate Yellowstone’s geothermal wonders and wildlife corridors significantly enhances the experience.
El Cósmico, Texas
El Cosmico in Marfa, Texas, occupies a very particular cultural niche — part art destination, part desert retreat, part counterculture landmark. The property offers a mix of restored vintage trailers, teepees, yurts, and safari tents spread across an open West Texas landscape that has been drawing artists, writers, and architects for decades.
The Marfa art scene, anchored by the Chinati Foundation’s permanent installation of minimalist works, adds an intellectual dimension to the stay that most glamping destinations can’t offer. The communal soaking tubs under the vast desert sky are worth the trip alone.
Firelight Camps, New York
Set within Buttermilk Falls State Park near Ithaca in the Finger Lakes region, Firelight Camps manages the rare trick of offering a genuine wilderness atmosphere within easy reach of a college town known for excellent food, wine, and culture. The canvas tents are furnished with real beds, wool blankets, and handcrafted wooden pieces, lit by lanterns and surrounded by the sounds of the gorge below.
The property operates with a strong local focus — breakfast uses ingredients from nearby farms, and the staff can point you toward the best of the Finger Lakes wine trail with the kind of enthusiasm that only comes from people who actually live there.
Dunton Hot Springs, Colorado
While its sister river camp earns a separate mention for its canyon setting, Dunton Hot Springs itself deserves recognition as one of the most extraordinary glamping-adjacent experiences in the country. The resort occupies a fully restored ghost town in the San Juan Mountains, with log cabins and a saloon clustered around a series of natural hot spring pools.
The setting — a narrow valley ringed by 14,000-foot peaks — is one of the most dramatic in Colorado, and the combination of historic character, genuine luxury, and thermal bathing is difficult to find anywhere else in the US.
Westgate River Ranch, Florida
Florida isn’t the first state that comes to mind for glamping, but Westgate River Ranch near Lake Wales delivers a genuine surprise. The property sits on 1,700 acres of old Florida ranchland, offering luxury glamping tents and upscale teepees alongside a full roster of activities that includes airboat rides, horseback trail rides, and rodeo shows on Saturday evenings.
The subtropical landscape — cypress swamps, live oaks draped in Spanish moss, open prairie — has a wild, unhurried quality that feels a long way from the theme park corridors of central Florida.
The Resort at Paws Up — Wilderness Camps, Montana
Returning to Paws Up for its wilderness-specific camp configuration, the property’s most remote glamping setups take guests further into the 37,000-acre estate to locations accessible only by horseback or ATV. These camps have no permanent structures other than the luxury tents, which means falling asleep to nothing but the sounds of the Blackfoot Valley and waking up to elk grazing in the meadow outside.
It’s as close to true wilderness immersion as you can get while still having a gourmet breakfast delivered to your door.
Ventana Big Sur, California
Ventana Big Sur has long been one of California’s most coveted retreat destinations, and its glamping offering — a collection of safari tents perched in a meadow above the Pacific Ocean — matches the property’s broader reputation for understated luxury. The tents come with heated floors, soaking tubs, and unobstructed views of the Big Sur coastline, arguably the most dramatic stretch of shoreline in the continental US.
The property’s Japanese bathhouse and farm-to-table restaurant complete an experience that makes it genuinely difficult to leave.
Under Canvas Zion, Utah
Under Canvas has developed a reliable formula for luxury glamping near America’s most visited national parks, and the Zion location is among the strongest in the collection. The safari-style tents are set up just outside Zion National Park in southern Utah, with wood-burning stoves, en-suite bathrooms, and private decks that face the vermilion canyon walls of the park.
The company keeps its footprint deliberately light, and the combination of park proximity and genuine comfort makes it a strong option for travelers who want to spend their days hiking the Narrows and their evenings in something considerably more comfortable than a sleeping bag.
Brush Creek Ranch, Wyoming
Located in the Sierra Madre Mountains of southern Wyoming, Brush Creek Ranch covers 30,000 acres of working ranchland and offers glamping accommodations that sit comfortably alongside its full roster of Western ranch experiences. The canvas tents are fully heated and furnished to a high standard, with views across open sage meadows that carry on to the horizon.
Activities lean heavily into the working ranch tradition — guests can participate in cattle drives, fly fish for native cutthroat trout, and take horseback rides through aspen groves that turn gold in the fall.
Amangiri, Utah
Amangiri is in a category of its own. The resort sits in a protected canyon in southern Utah, surrounded by some of the most otherworldly landscapes in North America, and its architectural integration with the surrounding sandstone formations is one of the great achievements of contemporary resort design.
While technically a hotel rather than a traditional glamping property, Amangiri’s open-air pavilions, private pool suites, and direct access to the canyon landscape deliver exactly what glamping promises at its most aspirational level. Rates reflect the prestige, but the experience — stargazing from a private terrace above the canyon, floating in a pool that seems to emerge from the rock itself — is essentially impossible to replicate anywhere else.
Where luxury meets the wild
American glamping has quietly grown from a novelty into a legitimate category of travel with serious standards and serious destinations. What started as a way to market upscale tents to people wary of conventional camping has evolved into a form of hospitality that takes its setting as seriously as its thread count.
The 15 properties listed here share a common understanding that the landscape is the real amenity — the beds, the food, and the hot tubs are just the supporting cast.
Whether it’s the canyon country of Utah, the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, or the wide-open ranchland of Montana and Wyoming, the US has the raw material to make outdoor luxury feel like something genuinely worth traveling for.
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