Agua Caliente
Agua Caliente here is the warm spring inside Roy Drachman Agua Caliente Regional Park, a Pima County park a mile or so from Tanque Verde. The water runs in the mid eighties, tepid. Access is open. This is county recreation land with a USGS record on the spring that reaches back decades, the kind of place you go to see the spring, since the temperature will not carry a soak.
Roadside inside a county park; the distance to the road is a couple hundred feet. Low desert elevation with a year that averages warm, little rain and almost no snow. Molino, a little over four miles off, is the campground the file lists.
December through February are listed as best, which fits the desert. Park rules apply; the land is a county regional park, so check the park's own page for hours. No fee is recorded in the file, though a park may have its own. The chemistry on record is from 1942 and counts as history more than guidance.
The county park that holds the spring carries its name, Roy Drachman Agua Caliente Regional Park. The USGS water sample on record was taken in February 1942.
Aircraft with laser scanners measured this ground to within inches. The scan strips out trees and buildings, leaving the bare shape of the land around Agua Caliente.
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 70 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the east
A slice through the ground from west to east, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's about 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 25% of the springs on this site.
Heat flow measures the warmth working its way up through the ground from deep inside the earth. Where it runs high, rain and snowmelt that seep down through cracks in the rock come back up hot.
See every spring on the geothermal heat map →
Heat flow estimate: Stanford Thermal Earth Model (Aljubran & Horne, 2024), CC BY 4.0.
The water at Agua Caliente contains 493 mg/L total dissolved solids.
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Overview Visitors are drawn to Molino Campground for its group camping area, scenic mountain surroundings and hiking and mountain biking opportunities. While most other campgrounds in the Catalina Mountains are closed in winter, Molino Campground and its picnic area are open in late fall, winter and early spring. The pleasant winter weather at this elevation makes it a great time to visit. Molino Basin is conveniently located 5.5 miles from the base of Mt. Lemmon on the Catalina Highway, and...
Agua Caliente is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. Bring sun protection for exposed soaking.
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