Unnamed Thermal 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.
Monterey County has this unnamed hot spring a dozen or so miles from Carmel Valley Village, where the recorded temperature is 114 degrees. Hot, above what most people tolerate for long. It sits low, a couple hundred feet up from the sea. Neither the landowner nor the public access status is on file, and the record holds no photograph.
The record calls it a short walk, about four tenths of a mile, and does not name the road. No snow falls here and precipitation runs about twenty-eight inches a year. Year-round the mean temperature on record sits in the high fifties, mild all told. Neither land unit nor designation appears on record.
The months on file are late winter into early March. White Oaks Campground is about fifteen miles off. At 114 degrees the water can scald given time; test it and do not sit in the hottest part. Ownership is unrecorded, so establish you are allowed there. No fee on file.
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 this spring.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 904 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the south
A slice through the ground from south to north, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's about 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 48% 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 Amid a grove of towering trees, eight campsites create a loop within White Oaks Campground, just off Tassajara Road. In the center of this loop, an enormous berry bush, shrubbery and trees reach up to the sky, creating the visual heart of this intimate setting. Red-tail deer and small animals can be seen eating berries around the middle of the campground, giving campers a memorable sight to see. Each campsite is shaded by the natural growth of the oak and pine trees, creating a seque...
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