Montezuma Hot Springs
Montezuma Hot Springs lies a few miles outside Las Vegas, New Mexico, in San Miguel County, and the water here comes out well past comfortable and close to scalding. Montezuma Street is the nearest road, under two hundred yards off. There is no owner listed and no word on access. There is a photo. No water chemistry and no USGS site number are attached to this point.
A short walk, call it five hundred feet, from Montezuma Street. Elevation is high, nearly seven thousand feet, and the climate figures show real winters with a fair amount of snow and steady precipitation through the year. Average temperatures are on the cool side. Johnson Mesa Campground is the nearest on file, around eleven miles away. No managing agency appears.
Hot water; test with a hand before you commit any more of yourself. Midwinter gets the best-time nod on the record, though the snow here is not trivial. Who owns the springs and whether they are open is not on file, so ask in Las Vegas. Johnson Mesa is the camp listed.
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 Montezuma 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.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the southwest.
- Highest ground nearby
- 398 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southwest
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 50% 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.
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Johnson's Mesa is a dispersed camping area located east of Las Vegas on NM 65 and FR 153. Facilities: vaulted toilets, tables and grills.
Montezuma Hot Springs sits at 6,840 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 27% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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Montezuma Hot Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water runs hot, so extra hydration is key.
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