Stratten Warm 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.
In the USGS thermal inventory for La Plata County there is a point called Stratten Warm Spring, about ten miles from Durango. Temperature and chemistry are both missing from this particular record, so the word warm in the name is all the record has to say about heat. Who owns it, and who may use it, is not on file. OpenStreetMap gives it no label. A Wikipedia page exists without an extract.
Under a hundred feet off the road, roadside by any measure. Elevation is mid. Snow is moderate and so is rain. Junction Creek Campground, about six miles, is what the record lists for camping. Durango, ten miles off, is the town on record. No land unit or owner is attached.
Best months: none given. Nothing in the record establishes water temperature, so any soak is speculation until someone measures it. Junction Creek Campground, six miles. Check land status before visiting, since the owner is unrecorded. Winter brings a few feet of snow, enough to matter.
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 Stratten Warm Spring.
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the west.
- Highest ground nearby
- 234 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
A slice through the ground from west to east, 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 58% 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 Junction Creek Campground is located close to Durango, Colo., near the beginning of the Colorado Trail. Visitors enjoy the area for its excellent hiking and biking opportunities in a scenic natural setting.Recreation The Colorado Trail, also known as the Junction Creek Trail, begins nearby and stretches almost 500 miles to Denver as it rises through subalpine forests and alpine meadows above the timberline. Mountain biking is very popular on the Colorado Trail and the Logchute Trail...
Stratten Warm Spring sits at 6,600 feet above sea level, way above the mile-high mark. You may not feel the altitude strongly, but hot water still dehydrates you faster at elevation. UV is about 26% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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