Frederick County, VA Fire Regulations: Fire Pits & Backyard Fires (2026)

Section 45-6 opens with a blanket rule: no owner may kindle an open fire in any public or private place outside a building anywhere in the unincorporated county outside Winchester, Stephens City and Middletown. Subsection C then lists the exceptions that keep a backyard fire pit or campfire legal, and clause (C)(4) names "open burning for the cooking of food or recreational purposes, such as campfires" as one of them. The county does not attach a printed setback distance or fire-pit size limit to this particular exception; the 500-foot distance-from-buildings rule and the attended-fire requirement that Article II sets for burning brush, leaves, grass and debris under § 45-10 apply only to that separate article and its listed materials, not to a cooking or recreational fire under § 45-6.

What does apply to a campfire is the same override that governs every open-burning exception: under § 45-6(A), during the existence of an air pollution alert declared by the appropriate authority, all exceptions become void and no open fires, campfires included, may be kindled or continued. The ordinance also still bans burning rubber tires, asphaltic material, used crankcase oil or other dense-smoke materials in any fire, recreational or otherwise, and separately prohibits open salvage burning. The Air Pollution Control Officer or Agency administers the chapter under §§ 45-2 and 45-5, and a fire that strays outside the cooking-or-recreational exception loses that exception and reverts to the general prohibition.