Wilson Hot 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.
Wilson Hot Spring draws more searches than most springs in Lyon County. The water comes out near boiling, far too hot to touch. It sits on Toiyabe National Forest land, open to the public, about sixteen miles from Smith. The file holds neither chemistry nor photograph.
Half a mile and a bit on foot from a road the record does not name. Elevation is around fifty-three hundred feet. Snow comes to about thirty inches a winter; precipitation is light. Forest Service land, National Forest designation. No campground is recorded. Nothing in the file describes the walk, so treat the distance as the only thing you know.
Winter is the window on file. Water this close to boiling scalds on contact, so stay well back. Open access, a short walk, no fee recorded. No camping is listed. Smith is the closest town, and it is a fair drive. The temperature reading has no date attached, so approach it as a warning.
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 Wilson Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the west.
- Highest ground nearby
- 301 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 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 47% 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.
Wilson Hot Spring sits at 5,325 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 21% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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