Bad Creek Spring
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
A warm spring in the Lake County hills, Bad Creek Spring sits a bit over three miles from Cobb. Tepid is the honest word for the temperature on record, water you notice is warm without wanting to stay in long. Who owns the land and whether the public may visit are both blank in the record, which is the main thing to know before planning around it.
Big Canyon Road comes within about four hundred feet, a short walk from whatever surface that road has. Elevation is modest, under seventeen hundred feet. Winters here are wet and mostly snowless, a couple of inches a year, and the yearly average temperature is mild. Nothing ties this spring to a land unit, so there is no ranger district or park office to call.
The record favors the three winter months, when tepid water feels warmest against cool air. For camping the record gives Warm Springs Rec Area, twenty miles off. Nothing confirms public access, so assume the ground could be private until you have checked. Nobody has noted a fee.
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 Bad Creek Spring.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the north.
- Highest ground nearby
- 376 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the north
A slice through the ground from north to south, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's about 2½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 95% 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.
Overview Warm Springs Recreation Area is a day-use park located at Lake Sonoma, which is just a 45 minute drive north of Santa Rosa and a 2 hour trip from San Francisco. There is no overnight camping available at this facility World famous vineyards and a land rich in history surround the lake, where visitors enjoy boating, fishing and exploring the area's extensive trail network.Recreation The Woodland Ridge Nature Trail begins at the park and winds up the ridge, rewarding hikers with great...
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