Mitchell Butte 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.
Mitchell Butte Hot Spring comes out of the ground beside Owyhee Lake Road in Malheur County, about eleven miles from Nyssa. It is scalding at the source, too hot to put a hand in. Nobody has recorded a landowner or an access status. Treat it as a roadside curiosity on the way to the Owyhee, something to know about if you are driving that road.
The lower Owyhee valley here is low and dry for eastern Oregon, under a foot of rain most years and light winter snow. The spring sits a few steps from the road edge, a stone's throw from Owyhee Lake Road. The record lists no land unit and no campground. What is around it beyond the road is not described on file.
Best months on record are the winter ones, December through February. The water will scald; do not touch the source and keep children and dogs back from it. Access is not on record, so ask locally or check ownership maps before leaving the road. There is no campground on file nearby and no fee 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 Mitchell Butte Hot Spring.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the north.
- Highest ground nearby
- 319 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the north
A slice through the ground from northwest to southeast, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's close to the US average of 65. It's higher than at 15% 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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Mitchell Butte Hot Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water is dangerously hot, so bring water shoes and test pools carefully.
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