Statue
Drag the handle to compare the two views. The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Statue is a warm spring in the Carson National Forest, Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, some 22 miles from Ohkay Owingeh. Forest Service land, open access. The water on file sits in the low eighties, pleasant on a summer afternoon and too cool to count as a hot soak. The record gives no clue where the name comes from.
At 6,600 feet the season usually stacks up two feet or so of snow. The road closest to it is half a mile away and carries no name in the record. National forest wraps the whole area. For camping the only thing listed is Aldo Leopold House, and twenty miles is a long way to go.
Midwinter is when the record rates a visit highest. Expect a short walk in. A 1952 water sample showed moderate dissolved solids, the common calcium and sulfate sort of mix. That is the last chemistry anyone logged here, so the figures may be stale. No fee is on record, and no pool is described.
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 Statue.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 264 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southwest
A slice through the ground from southwest to northeast, 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 57% 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 Statue contains 1140 mg/L total dissolved solids. 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).
Overview On February 2, 1912, Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) wrote to his fiancée, Estella Bergère, in Santa Fe that the Forest Service had appropriated $650 to build a new supervisor’s quarters he had designed at Tres Piedras, New Mexico, northwest of Taos. At the time, Leopold was about to become the new Forest Supervisor of the Carson National Forest in Tres Piedras. Later that year, he built the house, which the newly married couple decided to call “Mi Casita”. Leopold was transferred to Tres P...
Statue sits at 6,600 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 26% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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