Durfee Creek 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.
Durfee Creek Springs is on Bureau of Land Management ground, Lewistown Field Office, in Musselshell County, Montana, 29 miles from Roundup. Access is open. The water is tepid and very heavily mineralized, with a dissolved solids reading well into the thousands of milligrams per liter, plus iron. No campground appears in our records for it, and the designation on the land record is entered as public.
This one takes work. Upper Flatwillow Road is where the driving ends; the springs lie about two and a half miles beyond it on foot, across public land. Elevation is moderate. Snowfall lands in the fifty-inch range, and rainfall is moderate too. The USGS sampled here in 1973 and never recorded a discharge, so flow is unknown.
A hike, so plan for it; nothing on file describes the route. The record lists winter as best, which with the snow may mean walking in on a crust. Open access on BLM land, no fee recorded. The sample dates to 1973, and the water is tepid in any case, so go for the walk.
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 Durfee Creek Springs.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the north.
- Highest ground nearby
- 185 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the north
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 close to the US average of 65. It's higher than at 3% 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 Durfee Creek Springs contains 2670 mg/L total dissolved solids. It is notably rich in calcium (may support bone density and joint health), magnesium (known for muscle relaxation and stress relief), and sulfate (traditionally used for skin conditions and inflammation).