Thompson Ranch Spring
The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Barely warm is the reading for Thompson Ranch Spring, below the point where most people would call it a hot spring at all. It lies in Eureka County about 27 miles from Eureka, within sixty feet of a road. Nobody has written down who owns it, and the access status is empty. A 1981 water sample exists.
Roadside, beside a road the record fails to name. This is higher ground with cold winters; snow piles up to more than three feet, and the year's moisture is modest. Nothing on file gives a land unit.
The record's favored months are the coldest ones, January first. The water is barely warm, so count it as a spring to look at. A July 1981 sample measured near-neutral pH and the usual mineral set. Ownership is blank; ask before stopping. No fee or camping on record, and no photograph.
USGS hasn't flown a detailed laser scan here yet, so this view comes from aerial photos and older elevation data.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the east.
- Highest ground nearby
- 359 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 37% 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 Thompson Ranch Spring is neutral (pH 6.9).
Thompson Ranch Spring sits at 5,840 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.
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