Eric Siegfried was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1983. He moved to Eastern Montana when he was 4 years old and was raised between a small town and his stepfather’s cattle ranch. Through family and friends, he learned to hunt, fish, manage a ranch, and enjoy all types of outdoor recreation. 

 As he got older, he thoroughly enjoyed taking friends and family outdoors and guiding them into the places and recreation that he loved. He turned this passion into a job and began guiding hunters for Cottonwood Outfitters. He built on that passion even further when he used it as inspiration for creating onXmaps. Now, through the onXmaps suite of outdoor recreation mapping apps, he and the onXmaps team are like a personal guide alongside millions of people enjoying the outdoors and finding new places to love every day. 

Before founding onXmaps, Eric would use paper BLM and Forest Service maps to discover new places to archery hunt for elk, camp or enjoy other forms of outdoor recreation as he moved from Miles City, Montana, to Bozeman and then Missoula. After years of frustration with the limitations of those paper maps and lackluster GPS maps, he figured there had to be a better way. So, in 2007, he set out to develop a better solution using new mapping technologies and GPS.

The journey started with organizing recreation data that was beyond the cities and trailheads that everybody knew. He gathered data on rural roads, backcountry trails, topography and land ownership information that was necessary to navigate off the beaten path. By 2009, it had become clear there was an opportunity to create the first complete and accurate picture of land ownership across the entire United States. Much of the team’s focus in the early days had been on this aspect of the map. Now, it is organizing the world’s recreation information and working to be like a personal guide alongside anybody who is interested in exploring new places, doing their favorite recreation activities. 

After realizing success with mapping land ownership data and marketing that to the hunting community, Eric and the onX team were looking for a focused way to give back to others. It was, of course, fitting to focus on the outdoor recreation community with those efforts. When a historic land access point in the Missoula area was sold into private property, Eric and onX were driven to sponsor RMEF’s access program. So, the onX access initiatives were started, and Eric began his personal work to make sure similar small parcel properties that create access opportunities into large swaths of public land are not lost again.

You can learn more about these efforts by clicking on the Elk Mountain Project in the navigation bar. If you are aware of similar opportunities to preserve and create outdoor recreation, please contact Eric.

Eric is no longer working day-to-day at onX. He now manages a variety of businesses related to land operations. He oversees the operation of his family's cattle ranch in Eastern Montana, and he enjoys dinosaur fossil discovery on his ranch, managing wildlife and fostering a diverse set of outdoor recreation opportunities for all.