Neal 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.
Neal Hot Springs sits in Malheur County about eleven miles from Vale, and the water comes out near boiling, scalding by any measure. It is a USGS thermal site. The record does not say who owns the land or whether the public can visit, and there is no mention of a developed pool.
Bully Creek Road passes within ten feet of the spring, so this is as roadside as it gets. The elevation is low desert, around twenty-five hundred feet. Snow is scant, a bit over a foot in an average winter, and annual precipitation is about ten inches. Land ownership is blank in the record, as is the land unit.
The coldest months are the ones listed as best. Water this hot will burn on contact, so stay clear of the source and anything it feeds. No campground is on record nearby. Access is unknown, so find out whether the spring is on private ground before pulling over.
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 Neal Hot Springs.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the north.
- Highest ground nearby
- 325 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the north
A slice through the ground from north to south, 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 19% 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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