Kirkham Hot Springs
Kirkham Hot Springs sits beside a Forest Service campground of the same name, Boise National Forest, Boise County, Idaho, twenty-two miles or thereabouts from Idaho City. The record marks access open. At the source the temperature on record is scalding. Any soaking here relies on water that has lost heat between the vent and wherever people get in, and no pools are described on record.
Kirkham Road ends a few hundred feet short of the source; the last bit is on foot. Forest Service ground with nothing beyond National Forest in the way of designation. Snow piles up here in winter, well over a hundred inches most years, and the year is wet for Idaho. Elevation is middling.
The record points to winter. The Kirkham campground is right there, a tenth-mile off, about as close as camping gets. The water at the vent is hot enough to cause serious burns on contact, so find out where it has cooled before you touch anything. Chemistry was sampled in 1979 and the record shows nothing newer.
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 Kirkham 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.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 688 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southwest
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 twice the US average of 65. It's higher than at 91% 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 Kirkham Hot Springs is alkaline (pH 9.1).
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Overview Kirkham Campground is located next to the South Fork Payette River just east of Lowman, Idaho, along Highway 21 at an elevation of 4,000 feet. Visitors enjoy soaking in popular Kirkham Hot Springs on the banks of the river and exploring the scenic Kirkham Ridge Trail. Recreation Popular Kirkham Hot Springs is located at the river's edge within the campground. A trail with staircases leads down to the soaking pools and small steaming waterfalls. The South Fork Payette River offers...
Kirkham Hot Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water is dangerously hot, so bring water shoes and test pools carefully.
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