Little Warm Spring
Little Warm Spring sits on the Duckwater Reservation in Eureka County, forty-two miles from Eureka. At ninety degrees it is the warmest of the warm, right at the threshold of a soaking temperature. The land is tribal, and access is recorded as unknown, so this is a place to ask about before visiting. The USGS lists it and one photo is attached.
Duckwater Road passes about a thousand feet away. The spring is at about fifty-six hundred feet, where a typical winter lays down two feet of snow and the year's precipitation comes to nine inches. The land unit is the Duckwater Reservation.
The recommended stretch is December into February. Because this is reservation land with no recorded public access, contact the reservation before going. If permission is granted, the water is comfortable for a soak on a cold day. The record lists no fee and no campground.
It sits inside the Duckwater Reservation, which makes this tribal ground. The USGS keeps it on its list of thermal sites.
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 Little Warm 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.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 38 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northeast
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 close to the US average of 65. It's higher than at 17% 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.
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Little Warm Spring sits at 5,590 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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Little Warm Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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