Big Blue (A) 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.
Sixty miles out of Tonopah in Nye County, Big Blue (A) Spring comes up warm on BLM land, a long way from anything. The water sits right at the bottom of what most people call soaking temperature, warm enough on a cold day and unremarkable on a hot one. Access is open.
Western States Mine Road gets you within about a third of a mile, and from there it is a short walk. The BLM's Tonopah Field Office manages the ground. At around five and a half thousand feet this is high desert, dry most of the year, with winter snow on the order of two and a half feet, so road conditions in January are nothing like July.
The record favors the cold months, December through February, when warm water earns its keep. Open public land, short walk, no fee listed. The temperature is a survey figure from the USGS and could read differently on the day. Bring your own water; nothing on file indicates facilities of any kind.
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 Big Blue (A) Spring.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 35 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southeast
A slice through the ground from northwest to southeast, 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 36% 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.
Big Blue (A) Spring sits at 5,480 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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