Warm Springs Creek 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.
Despite the mild name, Warm Springs Creek Hot Springs is scalding at the source, far beyond anything a person could enter. It lies on Castle Meadow Drive in Boise County, roughly twenty-four miles from Idaho City. Land ownership and public access are both missing from the record. The 1978 chemistry shows moderate dissolved solids, including iron, in mildly alkaline water.
Castle Meadow Drive all but touches the spring, three yards away by the record, so this is a drive-up thermal feature with no walk at all. It lies at about thirty-five hundred feet. Snowfall averages about a hundred inches a year. The climate is moderately wet. No land unit or owner is named.
The recorded best months are the heart of winter. Swinging Bridge campground lies six or seven miles out. The water can scald instantly at the source; never enter without testing, and stay clear of the vent. Whether the public may visit is not on record, so find out before you drive in. The reading dates from November 1978.
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 Warm Springs Creek Hot Springs.
- Setting
- Valley floor
- Gentle slopes rise on both sides.
- Highest ground nearby
- 170 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northeast
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 2½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 95% 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 Warm Springs Creek Hot Springs is slightly alkaline (pH 8.4) with 307 mg/L total dissolved solids.
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...
Springs Near Warm Springs Creek Hot Springs
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Slightly Alkaline Springs (pH ~8.4)
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