Emigrant Springs
Emigrant Springs runs tepid, a spring on open BLM land in White Pine County, Nevada, forty-five miles from Ely. Seventy degrees on record, cool for a thermal spring. The Bristlecone Field Office has it, and the public can go.
The nearest road lies a hundred and fifty feet away; no road name is given. Mid-elevation basin, roughly 5,500 feet, with winter snow adding up to two feet and nine inches of precipitation. Public land, no gates or permissions on record.
The record calls the cold months best. Pull over and stroll in. No heat to worry about. Water was sampled in 1975: neutral, low in dissolved solids. No campground listed within range.
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 east.
- Highest ground nearby
- 99 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the east
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 20% 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 Emigrant Springs is neutral (pH 6.8) with 252 mg/L total dissolved solids.
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Emigrant Springs 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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Emigrant Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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