Wiley's Well
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Wiley's Well is an artesian well in the Colorado Desert of eastern Riverside County, west of Blythe and about a dozen miles from Mesa Verde, and the name also covers the surrounding region. It is on this site as a desert water source with a past; no temperature has been recorded. BLM land, open to anyone, with a campground of the same name a stone's throw off.
The well sits beside the road on public land administered by the BLM's Palm Springs and South Coast office. Low desert, under six hundred feet, and about as dry as California gets: four inches of rain, yearly, and no snow. A mean temperature in the mid seventies means summer is brutal. The campground of the same name is a couple hundred yards away, so the well and the camp are one stop.
No season is listed, but the climate makes the cool months the obvious time. Camp at Wiley's Well Campground. No fee recorded. Public access open. Remember there is no thermal reading here; come for the well and the desert. Blythe is the reference point Wikipedia uses, and Mesa Verde is the town the record attaches.
A stagecoach company working the nearby Bradshaw Trail dug a shallow well here in 1876. In 1907 A.P. Wiley, storekeeper and postmaster at Palo Verde, made it deeper, and it took his name.
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 Wiley's Well.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 14 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southeast
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 about 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 21% 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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Located in the lower Colorado Desert in eastern Riverside County, Wiley's Well campground is located adjacent to a desert riparian wash populated by palo verde, smoke tree, mesquite and ironwood trees. There is easy 4-wheel drive access to nearby rock-hounding sites: Hauser Geode Beds and Opal Hill Fire Agate Mine. The historic Bradshaw Trail National Scenic Byway provides access to numerous trails, gem and mineral collection sites, and an historic stage route/mining area. Long term perm...
Wiley's Well is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. Bring sun protection for exposed soaking.
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