Wild Horse 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.
Do not confuse this Wild Horse Hot Springs with the one in Montana. This is the Elko County spring, about fifty-six miles from Elko, and the water runs hot, above soaking range; it wants cooling. Ownership and access are unrecorded. Chemistry from 1974 is on file. No elevation or photograph is given.
Roadside, under two hundred feet from a road the record leaves unnamed. Winters are cold and heavy, with around six feet of snow, and annual precipitation is on the high side for Nevada. Land unit and designation are both empty, no campground is listed, and nothing describes the ground around the source. No elevation is given either.
Midwinter is the recommendation, though six feet of snow will make the roads a problem. Hot enough to burn: test before touching. Roadside. The owner is unrecorded, so look for signs. No camping is listed. Elko is a long way off.
The Wikipedia article attached to the record describes a Wild Horse Hot Springs in Lake County, Montana, a different place. Nothing in it applies here.
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 Wild Horse Hot Springs.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the south.
- Highest ground nearby
- 170 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 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 39% 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 Wild Horse Hot Springs is neutral (pH 7.2).
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Wild Horse Hot Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water runs hot, so extra hydration is key. Cold air temperatures make a changing robe or warm layers essential.
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