Nevada (Hinds) Hot Springs
Nevada Hot Springs, also on file as Hinds Hot Springs, sits right in Smith in Lyon County. The water is scalding at the source, well over what skin tolerates. Whether the public can get to it is not recorded, and no landowner is listed, so this page is mostly a record of a very hot spring in a small town.
About three hundred feet from the nearest road, a roadside spring at around 4,600 feet. Which road isn't noted. This part of Lyon County gets a couple of feet of snow in an ordinary winter and around thirteen inches of precipitation. Indian Creek Campground, over the California line, is the nearest camping on file at about 23 miles.
Midwinter is what the record recommends. Water this hot burns, so keep hands out of the source and look for cooled outflow if soaking is even possible, which the record cannot confirm. A 1974 sample shows alkaline water with iron in it. No fee recorded. Confirm access before you make the drive.
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 Nevada (Hinds) Hot Springs.
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
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the west.
- Highest ground nearby
- 355 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
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 2½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 95% 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 Nevada (Hinds) Hot Springs is alkaline (pH 8.7).
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Overview Due to the extensive damage sustained in the 2021 Tamarack Fire, Indian Creek Campground is CLOSED at this time and will remain closed until the area can be made safe for public access and facilities can be rebuilt. Updated Press Release . Indian Creek Campground is nestled in the eastern foothills of the Sierra Nevada between the California towns of Woodfords and Markleeville. Elevation in the area ranges from 5,600 feet at the reservoir to 6,400 feet in the surrounding foothills....
Nevada (Hinds) Hot Springs 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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