Rainbow 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.
Rainbow Spring is on the Zuni Reservation in McKinley County, twelve miles from Zuni Pueblo, off Ojo Caliente Road. Tepid, low seventies. Tribal land, access unknown. It was sampled in March 2023, which is recent for a thermal record, and the water came back near neutral with the common suite: calcium, magnesium, sodium, sulfate, chloride.
Ojo Caliente Road runs about 250 feet away, at 6,300 feet with a fair amount of winter snow, eighteen inches or so, in a dry year. The Zuni tribe owns the land. No one has written up what the outlet looks like. The climate average is cool, and the road is the one named feature near it.
Ask the Zuni tribe about access; tribal land means their rules. The winter months are the rated ones; snow may affect the road. No campground listed. The temperature is too low for a soak, so the reason to care is the recent sample, which is unusual.
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 Rainbow Spring.
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the south.
- Highest ground nearby
- 94 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 21% 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 Rainbow Spring is slightly alkaline (pH 7.3). It is notably rich in calcium (may support bone density and joint health), magnesium (known for muscle relaxation and stress relief), and sulfate (traditionally used for skin conditions and inflammation).
Rainbow Spring sits at 6,315 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 25% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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