Matilija Hot 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.
Matilija Hot Springs sits in the hills of Ventura County a few miles outside Meiners Oaks. This entry is one of two on file under that name. The water comes out at soaking temperature, warm enough that most people would get in without waiting for it to cool. Nothing on record says who owns it or whether the public may enter, so treat this as a place to research before you drive out.
The spring is roadside, within a hundred yards of pavement, though which road is not recorded. Low foothill country, barely above a thousand feet. Winters here are mild and mostly snowless, and the year as a whole is dry, with what rain there is bunched into the cooler months. No land unit appears in this entry.
Winter is the season the record favors, December through February, when the air is cool enough for a hot soak to make sense. Wheeler Gorge campground is close, a couple of miles off. Access is the open question. There is no owner on file and no note on public entry, so confirm before you go. A roadside pin on a map says nothing about permission.
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 Matilija Hot Springs.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 723 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southwest
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 9% 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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Overview Wheeler Gorge Campground is a great place for families to explore the Los Padres National Forest all year long. Informative tours of the area are led by forest rangers at the nearby visitor center. The campground provides scenic views of a nearby stream, as well as vast mountain vistas.Recreation The Wheeler Gorge Nature Trail begins at the upper end of the campground. It is a relatively short loop that leads through thick vegetation along the creek banks and to a hillside view of th...
Matilija Hot Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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