Golconda Hot Spring (South)
The southern Golconda spring comes up within a few dozen feet of East Fourth Street, about 12 miles from Winnemucca. Its water is hot enough to burn. The northern spring is its companion in this same record. Neither spring has an owner or access status on file. A 1974 water sample is all the chemistry there is.
You can nearly reach this one from a car door. Roadside, off East Fourth Street, at mid elevation in dry basin country with some snow most winters. A 1974 sample logged moderate dissolved solids and a neutral pH, iron among the minerals. Land unit and campground are blank, and so is fee.
December through February are the listed months. The water will scald. Keep hands and pets out. Access is not recorded, so check for posted notices before walking over. That chemistry is half a century old. There is a photo attached if you want to know what you are looking for.
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 Golconda Hot Spring (South).
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
- 21 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the south
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 65% 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 Golconda Hot Spring (South) is neutral (pH 7.0) with 626 mg/L total dissolved solids. It is notably rich in iron (iron-rich springs may support circulation).
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Golconda Hot Spring (South) is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water is dangerously hot, so bring water shoes and test pools carefully.
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