Gregson Hot Springs
Gregson Hot Springs, the name Wikipedia also gives as Fairmont Hot Springs, is a geothermal system where the water comes out scalding, well past anything you could sit in. The row puts it in Deer Lodge County, with the town of Warm Springs next door, though Wikipedia files it under Silver Bow County. It sits a few steps off the road. A USGS site is attached, sampled in the late seventies.
Roadside in every sense. The spring sits a few paces off a road, though which road goes unrecorded. This is valley floor by Montana standards. Snow piles up through the winter, close to six feet over a season, and total precipitation is moderate. High Rye Cabin is the closest camping on file, about three and a half miles away.
The water is far too hot to touch at the source. Keep skin out of it. Winter is the listed season, which fits a hot spring, though the snow means checking roads. The 1978 USGS sample ran alkaline with iron present. Whoever owns the ground is not recorded, and no fee or access status is given, so assume nothing about walking up to it.
Wikipedia treats Gregson and Fairmont Hot Springs as the same system and places it in Silver Bow County. For years the mineral water was believed to ease rheumatism and arthritis, among other complaints. The USGS keeps a numbered monitoring site on it, with chemistry dating to August 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 Gregson 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.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 29 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
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 40% 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 Gregson Hot Springs is slightly alkaline (pH 8.5).
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Overview High Rye Cabin is a quaint place to stay, ideally situated for exploring the northern Fleecer Mountains. An abundance of recreational activities are available in this scenic area. The cabin was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps around 1919 and is located in the historic mining district of German Gulch. It was used as an administrative site until the 1940s, when it was opened to the public. The cabin can be accessed by vehicle; however, during the fall, alternative resourc...
Gregson Hot Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water is dangerously hot, so bring water shoes and test pools carefully. Cold air temperatures make a changing robe or warm layers essential.
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