Corn Spring
Corn Spring is a tepid seep in the Imperial County desert, roughly thirty miles from Niland. The water is cooler than a bath, which settles the soaking question. A campground carrying the same name sits a couple hundred yards off, and the road runs almost to the water. The Bureau of Land Management holds this ground and access is open to the public.
Corn Springs Road passes within two hundred feet. The spring sits at modest elevation on the low desert, in a climate where a year's rain comes to four inches and snow has never been recorded. The BLM's Palm Springs/South Coast Field Office manages the ground. Summers will be brutal; the yearly average temperature already runs in the low seventies.
Go in winter. December through February are on file as best, and desert heat the rest of the year will make a tepid pool pointless. Corn Springs Campground is right there, a short distance from the water, though the record does not give a site count. A USGS monitoring point sits here. No fee is noted. Check current BLM conditions before driving out; the record says open, and it is a long way from Niland.
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 Corn 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.
- Setting
- Valley floor
- Gentle slopes rise on both sides.
- Highest ground nearby
- 153 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the south
A slice through the ground from northwest to southeast, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's about twice the US average of 65. It's higher than at 68% 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.
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The Corn Springs Campground is located deep in a canyon of the Chuckwalla Mountains and has a $6.00 per night camping fee. Situated adjacent to a stand of California fan palms. This oasis supports abundant wildlife and is an important stopping place for migratory birds. Wheelchair accessible. Corn Springs was a major occupation site of prehistoric Native American Indian groups. The petroglyphs at Corn Springs are one of the finest examples of rock art in the Colorado Desert. They displ...
Corn Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. Bring sun protection for exposed soaking.
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