Bruneau Hot 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.
Bruneau Hot Spring sits a mile from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Elmore County, about as close to a town as any spring in this part of Idaho gets. The water measures in the mid 100s, soaking warm. Who owns the land and whether you can reach it are both blank on file, and no picture is on record. Hot Creek Road passes right beside it.
This is low desert. At around 2,600 feet the climate runs dry and mild, under a foot of snow in a year and about ten inches of rain. Summers are hot. The spring is roadside, a hundred feet or so off Hot Creek Road, so there is no walking involved, only the question of whether you are allowed to stop.
Winter tops the list, which fits a desert this high up where snow stays rare and the air cools off. No campground shows up nearby. The chemistry sample dates to 1989 and read mildly alkaline. Access has never been recorded, and with the base sitting a mile off, it is on you to learn who the landowner is first.
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 Bruneau Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the southwest.
- Highest ground nearby
- 165 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southwest
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 46% 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 water at Bruneau Hot Spring is alkaline (pH 8.6).
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