Mangas 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.
Mangas Springs sits within seventy feet of McMillen Road, about fifteen miles out of Silver City, so pulling onto the shoulder puts you there. The water is warm, roughly bath-cool, well short of a hot soak. Who owns it and whether visitors are welcome have never been written down, and there is no photo. What exists is a USGS thermal point in Grant County, sampled in 1955.
McMillen Road is the access, and the spring is right beside it. It sits at low foothill elevation in a part of the state with mild winters, a few inches of snow a year, and not much rain. Nothing on file names a land unit or designation, so the ground could be private. No campground is listed.
The winter months are flagged as best, and with snow this light there is nothing stopping a December visit. Chemistry amounts to pH and chloride, seventy years old. The temperature reading is of similar vintage, so the spring may run cooler or hotter than listed now. Find out who owns the land before you pull over.
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 Mangas Springs.
- Setting
- Valley floor
- Gentle slopes rise on both sides.
- Highest ground nearby
- 120 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
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 45% 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 Mangas Springs is slightly alkaline (pH 7.6).
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Mangas Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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