Murphy Hot Springs
Murphy Hot Springs sits alongside Big Cottonwood Campground on BLM ground in Elko County, about forty-four miles from Jackpot. The water comes out hot, well past what you can sit in without cooling. Access is open under the Jarbidge Field Office. A short walk off Three Creek Road gets you there.
Dry uplands a mile above sea level. Precipitation is modest and winter snow amounts to four or five feet over the season, enough to matter for Three Creek Road. The BLM holds the land. From the road it is a couple hundred yards on foot, and the campground is about the same distance, so the spring and the campsites share one corner of the map.
Listed best months run December through February. Camp at Big Cottonwood Campground, which is essentially at the spring. No fee is on record. The source temperature is hot enough to hurt, so find where the water has cooled before you sit, and keep children back from the outlet. The chemistry on file comes from a 1978 sample.
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 Murphy 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
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the east.
- Highest ground nearby
- 195 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 65% 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 Murphy Hot Springs is slightly alkaline (pH 8.5) with 162 mg/L total dissolved solids.
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Two-wheel drive vehicles are sufficient to reach the campground, located on the East Fork of the Jarbidge River about half a mile north of Murphy Hot Springs.
Murphy Hot Springs sits at 5,380 feet above sea level, way above the mile-high mark. You may not feel the altitude strongly, but hot water still dehydrates you faster at elevation. UV is about 22% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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Murphy Hot Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water runs hot, so extra hydration is key.
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