Straight Creek Hot Spring
The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Straight Creek Hot Spring is scalding. The recorded temperature is 144 degrees, hotter than you can hold a hand in, and it surfaces a few dozen feet from Middle Fork Road inside the Boise National Forest, Boise County, about twenty miles from Idaho City. Access is open. This is a spring to look at and, if a cooled pool exists, to test with great care.
National forest at around 4,100 feet beside Middle Fork Road, sixty-odd feet from the road surface. Winters drop about ten feet of snow on average and the annual mean temperature is in the mid forties. Precipitation comes to around thirty inches a year. The land carries a National Forest designation and nothing more specific.
December through February are the recorded best months. Barber Flat Cabin is the nearest listed overnight spot, about five miles away. The water is very alkaline according to a 1981 USGS sample. Above 140 degrees the source water can burn on contact; do not step into anything you have not checked with a hand first. No fee is recorded.
USGS hasn't flown a detailed laser scan here yet, so this view comes from aerial photos and older elevation data.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 672 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the south
A slice through the ground from south to north, 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 85% 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 Straight Creek Hot Spring is alkaline (pH 9.6).
Overview The Barber Flat Cabin site was established for administrative use by the Forest Service in 1923, and was used prior to that by the Barber Lumber Company. At the time, the Forest Service used a cabin already on-site as a guard station and then built a new one in 1927. The current cabin and outbuildings were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935, and the cabin today looks much as it did back then. Guests can drive to Barber Flat Cabin in two-wheel drive passenger cars or tr...
Springs Near Straight Creek Hot Spring
More Springs Around 144°F
Alkaline Springs (pH ~9.6)
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