Horseshoe 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.
Two miles from Soda Bay in Lake County, Horseshoe Spring comes up near the top of comfortable soaking temperature, hot without being scalding. The record is silent on owner and access; chemistry is blank too, and no survey date sits behind the temperature reading.
Roughly five hundred feet of walking, starting from a road that is unnamed on file. Modest elevation, around twenty-seven inches of rain, a few inches of snow. The nearest camp listed is Letts Lake, more than twenty miles away, so this is a stop on the way somewhere, a soak if permitted.
The record lists winter. Pleasantly hot water, close to the edge of too hot, so put a hand in first. Access and ownership unknown; ask locally before treating it as public. No fee on file. Short walk is the access class, so expect a little ground to cover from wherever you leave the car, and nothing on file describes a pool.
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 Horseshoe Spring.
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the southwest.
- Highest ground nearby
- 180 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southwest
A slice through the ground from southwest to northeast, 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 97% 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 main feature of the area is a 35-acre lake for non-motorized vessels, trout fishing and swimming. A one-mile trail leads along the lake shore. There are accessible restrooms and a popular fully-accessible fishing pier.
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