Why do they call it boondocking — and what does the word actually mean for RVers today?

The word “boondocking” traces back over a century to the Tagalog word bundók, meaning “mountain,” picked up by U.S. soldiers in the Philippines around 1900. It evolved through military slang into everyday American English, and eventually landed in the RV world to describe self-reliant, off-grid camping without water, power, or sewer hookups — usually on public land.

A Word With a Surprisingly Long Journey

Most RVers toss around the word “boondocking” without giving it a second thought. You’re parked on BLM land, the hookups are nowhere in sight, and the nearest campground host is two mountain ranges away. That’s boondocking. Simple enough.

But the story of how that word got here — from the jungles of the Philippines to the deserts of the American Southwest — is one of the more interesting word histories in the English language. It’s also one of the few words English borrowed directly from Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines.

It Started With a War Most Americans Have Forgotten

In 1899, the United States found itself fighting a guerrilla war in the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. American soldiers were pushed into unfamiliar terrain — dense jungle, steep mountain passes, and remote interior wilderness that felt nothing like anything back home.

Filipino fighters would disappear into the bundók — a Tagalog word meaning “mountain” — and American troops quickly adopted the term to describe the rugged, disorienting backcountry they were fighting through. Military historian Paul A. Kramer noted that the word carried early “connotations of bewilderment and confusion,” which makes sense for soldiers navigating jungle warfare in a foreign land.

By the time those soldiers came home, boondocks came with them. It entered American English as slang for any remote, wild, or out-of-the-way place — the kind of place where civilization felt very far off.

From the Trenches to the Campfire

The word kept evolving. The first known print citation appeared in 1927, in Leatherneck magazine — a U.S. Marine Corps publication — referencing a dispatch from Nicaragua. By the 1950s, the term had gone fully mainstream. After a tragic incident at the Marine Corps’ Parris Island in 1956, recruits testified they had been sent “out in the boondocks,” and that phrase went national almost overnight.

Vietnam cemented the shortened form. American troops serving in Southeast Asia started calling remote jungle terrain “the boonies,” and that version stuck hard in stateside slang through the 1970s and beyond. If you grew up in a rural area, you’ve probably heard a parent or grandparent say they lived “out in the boonies” — that’s the same trail of linguistic breadcrumbs.

The RV World Gets Its Own Word

So how did a military term for remote wilderness become the go-to word for camping without hookups?

The credit for applying it specifically to RV camping is widely given to Bob Livingston, an editor at Trailer Lifemagazine. According to RV forum discussions and longtime community members, Livingston used the term in the late 20th century to describe dispersed camping on National Forest and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands — the kind of free, unstructured camping in undeveloped areas that was distinct from simply being in a campground without plugging in.

That distinction matters, and it’s one that still gets debated on forums like iRV2, Reddit’s r/vandwellers, and PopUpPortal to this day.

Boondocking vs. Dry Camping — Not the Same Thing

Ask in any RV community and you’ll find strong opinions on this. The clearest way most experienced RVers draw the line:

• Boondocking means you’re camping in the boondocks — remote, dispersed public land, away from developed facilities. The location is the defining factor.
• Dry camping means camping without hookups, but it can happen anywhere — including a Walmart parking lot or a fairgrounds overflow area.

You can dry camp without boondocking. You can’t really boondock without dry camping. The two overlap often enough that many people use them interchangeably, and plenty of RVers will argue that’s perfectly fine. But the word’s own history makes the distinction clear: boondocks was always about being somewhere remote, not just somewhere unplugged.

Why the Word Has Stuck

There’s a reason “boondocking” caught on the way it did. It captures something that “dry camping” or “dispersed camping” simply don’t. It has texture. It sounds like an adventure. It carries that old military energy — the sense that you’re somewhere most people aren’t, doing something that requires a little more self-reliance than the norm.

Across YouTube channels, RV blogs, and forum threads, boondocking has become something of a badge. Searching the term on YouTube returns hundreds of channels and thousands of hours of content — everything from off-grid solar setups to 30-day challenge videos on remote desert playas. The word has become a lifestyle identifier in a way that “free camping” never quite managed.

It also connects to something deeper about why people RV in the first place. The appeal of finding your own patch of public land, parking with a wide-open view, and running entirely on your own power and water supply isn’t just about saving campground fees. It’s about the feeling that comes with it — the same feeling those soldiers were trying to describe over a century ago when they first reached for a Tagalog word because no English word fit.

A Mountain Word for a Wandering Life

From bundók to boondocks to boondocking — the word has traveled as far as the RVers who use it. It crossed an ocean with soldiers, worked its way through military dispatches and national headlines, got shortened by troops in Vietnam, and eventually found a permanent home in the RV community.

Next time you’re parked somewhere gorgeous with no neighbors for miles and the solar panels soaking up the afternoon sun, you’re doing exactly what that word has always described: you’re out in the mountains, the backcountry, the middle of nowhere — the boondocks.

It just took about 125 years and a Filipino mountain range to get there.

AI tools were used in the creation of this post.