Indian 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.
Indian Hot Springs, the Elmore County one, is a long way from anywhere: Glenns Ferry, the nearest town in our records, is some forty-six miles off. Scalding at the source. It is on BLM land managed from the Bruneau Field Office and listed as open to the public, with a road named for the spring running within half a mile.
Indian Hot Springs Road gets you to within about four tenths of a mile. After that it is a walk across BLM ground. Elevation is modest, under four thousand feet, and the climate is dry with light snow. The Forks Campground is about twenty-four miles away, the closest we know of.
The dry months are December through February, and snowfall is light enough that it should not block you. The water will burn on contact. Test with a hand before any part of you goes in. Chemistry and temperature date to a 1978 survey. Open access, no fee on record.
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 Indian Hot Springs.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the east.
- Highest ground nearby
- 277 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the east
A slice through the ground from southwest to northeast, 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 57% 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 Indian Hot Springs is alkaline (pH 9.4) with 286 mg/L total dissolved solids.
This small campground is located on the East Fork of the Jarbidge Wild and Scenic River about two miles north of Murphy Hot Springs across from the Jarbidge River Put-in. Two-wheel drive vehicles are sufficient to reach the site.
Springs Near Indian Hot Springs
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Alkaline Springs (pH ~9.4)
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