Hot Springs
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Plain old Hot Springs, no other name, in Elmore County about nine miles from Mountain Home. The water is scalding. At this temperature it would burn skin on contact, so whatever is here, it is off limits as found. Who owns the ground and whether the public can reach it are both missing from our records.
Low elevation, a little over thirty-five hundred feet, with a dry climate and light winters by Idaho standards. The nearest road is about a fifth of a mile away, name unknown to us. Land ownership is unrecorded. Spillway Campground, about fourteen miles off, is the only camping we list nearby.
The driest months fall in winter. Treat the water as dangerous; it is far past the scalding threshold. There is no access status on file, so you may be looking at private land, and the chemistry and temperature come from a 1957 survey. Confirm all of it before driving out.
The USGS visited in July 1957 and recorded the water as strongly alkaline with a moderate load of dissolved solids.
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 Springs.
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the northeast.
- Highest ground nearby
- 60 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northeast
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 52% 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 Springs is alkaline (pH 9.4) with 286 mg/L total dissolved solids.
Overview: Spillway Campground is a small campground with 3 campsites along Anderson Ranch Reservoir. The reservoir is a popular destination for fishing, boating, waterskiing and riding personal watercraft. There is excellent fishing in the reservoir for smallmouth bass and kokanee. Also try your luck at fly fishing just below the dam for a trout!Rafting access is at Reclamation Village, just south of the campground.
Springs Near Hot Springs
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Alkaline Springs (pH ~9.4)
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