Lovells Hot 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.
Lovells Hot Spring is a hot spring in name only. The water in Beaverhead County, eight miles or so from Dillon, comes out tepid, warm to the hand and useless for soaking. The record carries no owner and no chemistry. It is a point on the map beside a road, with a temperature attached and little else.
Roadside, a couple hundred feet from a road that goes unnamed. The spring sits at middling elevation in dry country, little more than a foot of precipitation a year and a light snow season. Henneberry House, a bit over four miles away, is the camping the row names. No land unit and designation is on record.
Winter months are listed as best, which for tepid water mostly means the roads are clear enough in a dry valley. Henneberry House is it for camping. Confirm who owns the land; the row does not say. There is no fee given and no sample date, so the temperature is an unverified figure.
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 Lovells Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the southwest.
- Highest ground nearby
- 86 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southwest
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 72% 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.
Overview The Dillon Field Office is unable to make reservations for you. Please call Recreation.gov (877-444-6777) to book a reservation or book online. This historic cabin, built in 1905, is located approximately 14 miles south of Dillon, Montana, on the banks of the Beaverhead River. The cabin provides access to a variety of outdoor recreational activities on adjacent public lands. The cabin and surrounding lands are managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Recreation Recreation opportu...
Lovells Hot Spring sits at 5,506 feet above sea level, way above the mile-high mark. You may not feel the altitude strongly, but hot water still dehydrates you faster at elevation. UV is about 22% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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