Queens River Hot Spring
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Queens River Hot Spring comes up a short way off West China Basin Road on Boise National Forest land in Camas County, close to forty miles from Fairfield. Its temperature was recorded only as hot. No figure. The 1981 sample was strongly alkaline, and the file marks public access as open.
A little over five thousand feet, wet country, where a normal winter brings fifteen feet of snow. Roadside once the road is drivable, which for much of the year it may not be. Atlanta Cabin, under four miles off, is the camping entry. The Forest Service owns the ground and the designation is ordinary National Forest, nothing more restrictive.
Best months: none recorded. Go when West China Basin Road is open, which given the snowfall will be after the melt. Atlanta Cabin is the listed overnight option. No fee recorded. The temperature is unrecorded beyond the word hot, so the source could be well past soaking heat. Check it.
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 Queens River Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 594 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southeast
A slice through the ground from north to south, 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 81% 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 Queens River Hot Spring is alkaline (pH 9.6).
Overview Atlanta Cabin is located in the old mining town of Atlanta, Idaho, at an elevation of 5,800 feet. It is part of a historic ranger station compound built by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Forest Service in 1933. This compound, known as the Atlanta Ranger Station Historic District, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.The roads to the cabin are generally well-maintained, although there are some rough washboard sections. Guests can drive to the cabin, but shoul...
Springs Near Queens River Hot Spring
Alkaline Springs (pH ~9.6)
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