Shipley Hot Spring
The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Shipley Hot Spring comes out at a soaking temperature, a little over body heat, in the valley country of Eureka County about thirty miles from the town of Eureka. Who owns it and the access situation are both blank in the record. That matters more than anything else here.
The nearest road ends about five hundred feet short of the spring, an easy walk if the ground is open. No road name is on file. Elevation is high valley, cold enough that more than three feet of snow falls in a typical winter. Precipitation for the year is modest, around eleven inches.
Best months on record are the winter ones. Water chemistry comes from a 1981 sample: slightly acidic, with calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfate, chloride and the pH all measured. Forty-plus years is long enough for a spring to change. Access is not on record, so confirm ownership before you go. No campground or fee listed.
OpenStreetMap carries the spring under a misspelled name, Shipley Hot Spting, and the USGS has it logged as a thermal site.
USGS hasn't flown a detailed laser scan here yet, so this view comes from aerial photos and older elevation data.
- Setting
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 89 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the northwest
A slice through the ground from northwest to southeast, 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 26% 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 Shipley Hot Spring is slightly acidic (pH 6.7).
Shipley Hot Spring sits at 5,800 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 23% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.