Hot Spring Campground
Hot Spring Campground is the name on record for a thermal source on Boise National Forest ground, sixteen miles from Idaho City, Boise County. Open to visitors, the record says. The water is hot, too hot for comfortable soaking as it comes out, and the flow the USGS logged is tiny, a bare trickle. A Forest Service campground called Hot Springs sits under a mile away.
The source is a stone's throw from the road, well under two hundred feet, though the road itself is not named in the record. National Forest land at one of the lower elevations among Idaho's springs. Winters bring a good deal of snow, over six feet most winters, and the year as a whole is fairly wet.
Winter is the season on record here, December into February. Camping is about as convenient as it gets, with the Hot Springs campground less than a mile off. Hot enough to hurt, this one, so go in by degrees and check it with a hand before anything else. The recorded flow is very small, so do not expect much volume. Chemistry was last sampled in 1978.
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 Hot Spring Campground.
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 517 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northeast
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 twice the US average of 65. It's higher than at 83% 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 Hot Spring Campground is alkaline (pH 9.0).
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Overview Hot Springs Campground is located just east of Garden Valley, Idaho along the Banks-Lowman Highway at an elevation of 3169 feet. Visitors enjoy rafting, kayaking, fishing on the South Fork Payette River, and soaking in the hot springs at the river's edge. Recreation The South Fork Payette River is across the road from the campground, offering fishing, whitewater rafting, and kayaking. A natural hot springs soaking pool is located on the river directly across the road and down a...
Hot Spring Campground is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water runs hot, so extra hydration is key.
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