Moss Ranch 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.
Moss Ranch Springs, plural, is a warm spring in Lake County about 26 miles out of Lakeview. The water is warm to the touch and a little below body temperature. No landowner is recorded and visitor access is unknown. There is no photo, so what you find on arrival is anyone's guess.
County Highway 3-10 is the road the record points to, and the spring sits a few hundred feet from it, a short walk by the record's reckoning. The elevation puts it in Lake County's high desert. Snowfall runs a bit under four feet over a winter, and the precipitation total is low, as it is across this part of Oregon.
On file the best months are the cold ones, December into February. The walk from the highway is short. Drake Peak Lookout, about fifteen miles away, is the camping option listed. Since ownership and access are both unrecorded, find out whose land it is before you cross it.
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 Moss Ranch Springs.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the west.
- Highest ground nearby
- 395 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
A slice through the ground from west to east, 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 6% 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.
Overview Located on the crest of the Warner Mountain Range at an elevation of 8,222 feet, Drake Peak Lookout hugs the wind-swept land surrounding it, offering unparalleled views into Oregon, California and Nevada. The lookout was built in 1948 and has served as a fire detection site for the surrounding area. Historically, Forest Service personnel lived long seasons in the cabin, scanning the region for lightning, flames, curls of smoke or any other indicator of possible forest fires. At one...
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