Bassett Hot Springs
The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Bassett Hot Springs scalds. It sits in Shasta County, thirty-four miles from Burney and a few hundred yards in from the road. The temperature on record is far too hot to touch. That, plus a blank land owner and a blank access status, makes it a spring you research before you drive to, and the drive is a long one from anywhere the record names.
Those few hundred yards start at a nameless road, a shade over four thousand feet. Winters are snowy, around fifty inches, and the annual average temperature is cool, low fifties. Pit River Campground, twenty-three miles distant, is the only camping in the record. The ground is unrecorded: no owner, no unit.
The climate averages rate December through February highest, yet fifty inches of snow at four thousand feet means those months may be the hardest to reach; judge by current conditions. Scalding water; do not touch the source. The owner is unknown to the record, as is the access status, and Pit River is a long way off if you planned on camping.
USGS hasn't flown a detailed laser scan here yet, so this view comes from aerial photos and older elevation data.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 18 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 close to the US average of 65. It's higher than at 5% 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 Pit River Recreation area is adjacent to the Pit River, has a small campground with eight campsites with tables, metal firerings, and barbeque pits. Amenities include: two single wheelchair accessible restrooms, a kayak launch ramp, and an accessible fishing pier. Camping:$8.00/night
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