Salado Springs
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Salado Springs sits right at Saint Johns in Apache County, close enough that the distance to town rounds to zero. The water is mild, low seventies, warm to the touch and no more. It is a USGS-recorded thermal spring with a water sample on file from the mid-1980s, and the land owner and the access status both failed to make it into the record, which is the first thing to sort out if you mean to visit.
A third of a mile or so from the closest road, at nearly six thousand feet in the high country of Apache County. Winters here bring around ten inches of snow and the year as a whole is dry, eight inches of rain or so. The sample found slightly alkaline water carrying iron along with the usual calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfate and chloride. No campground is on file.
The rating favors winter, and at this elevation expect cold nights then. Access is unrecorded, so find out who owns the ground before walking in. The chemistry is forty years old and the temperature reading has no date attached; both could have drifted. No fee is listed.
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 Salado Springs.
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the north.
- Highest ground nearby
- 40 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the north
A slice through the ground from south to north, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's close to the US average of 65. It's higher than at 1% 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 Salado Springs is slightly alkaline (pH 7.9). It is notably rich in calcium (may support bone density and joint health), magnesium (known for muscle relaxation and stress relief), and sodium (supports circulation and skin hydration).
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Salado Springs sits at 5,840 feet above sea level, way above the mile-high mark. You may not feel the altitude strongly, but hot water still dehydrates you faster at elevation. UV is about 23% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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Salado Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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