Crystal Springs
A system of warm springs and seeps in Lincoln County, Nevada, about eleven miles from Alamo. The water runs warm, right at the bottom edge of what most people would soak in. Crystal Springs shares its name with the ghost town that once stood here. Land ownership is not on record and neither is public access, so treat it as unverified.
Warm Springs Road passes within a couple hundred feet, which makes this a pull-over stop. The springs sit low in the valley, well under four thousand feet, in country that sees seven inches of rain in a typical year. Snow is light, ten inches or so across a whole winter. Marshes spread along the White River here.
Go in the cool months. The record points to December through February. Water chemistry was last sampled in 2005 and came back mild and near neutral, with modest dissolved solids. Nothing on file says who holds the land or if you can walk in, so settle that first. No campground is listed.
Wikipedia describes Crystal Springs as a cluster of geothermal springs and seeps near Ash Springs, sitting where the town of Crystal Springs, Nevada once stood. The town is gone. Several marshes and springs line the White River in the same area.
USGS hasn't flown a detailed laser scan here yet, so this view comes from aerial photos and older elevation data.
The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the northwest.
- Highest ground nearby
- 37 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northwest
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 32% 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 Crystal Springs is slightly alkaline (pH 7.4) with 280 mg/L total dissolved solids.
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Crystal Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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