Sweet Warm Spring
Sweet Warm Spring is barely warm, a few degrees under seventy in the one measurement on file, taken in August 1972. Dip a hand and you would register that it is not cold, and little more. It surfaces in Gem County, eleven miles from Emmett in the low country of southwestern Idaho. The land owner is not recorded and neither is any access status, so whether you can legally reach the water is an open question.
The Sweet Ola Highway runs right past, fifty feet or so from the spring, about as roadside as it gets. At around twenty-five hundred feet the weather is lowland weather: mild winters with light snow, and a fairly dry year. Whose ground it sits on is not listed.
Midwinter is listed as the best time to come, though with so little heat in the water the season hardly changes what you will find. The closest camping on file is Swinging Bridge, roughly seventeen miles off. No burn risk at all. What needs checking is permission, since nothing on record says the spring is open, and the reading itself dates back half a century.
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 Sweet Warm 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.
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the east.
- Highest ground nearby
- 24 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the east
A slice through the ground from west to east, 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 18% 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 Sweet Warm Spring is neutral (pH 7.2) with 580 mg/L total dissolved solids.
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Overview Swinging Bridge Campground is located 10 miles north of Banks, Idaho just off Highway 55 at an elevation of 4,000 feet. The North Fork Payette River flows next to the highway, where extreme kayaking is a popular activity.Recreation The North Fork of the Payette River is a very popular location for expert kayaking. Whitewater rafting is nearby on the Main and South Fork sections of the Payette River. Anglers will find good to excellent fishing for whitefish and rainbow trout.Facili...
Sweet Warm Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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