Vale Hot Springs
Vale Hot Springs rises half a mile from the center of Vale in Malheur County, a few dozen yards from A Street East. Scalding is the word for the water at the outlet, hot enough to cook with. Nobody should put a hand in it as it comes out. Owner and access are not on file. Its interest is as an in-town thermal source.
Vale sits low and dry in the Malheur country, with ten inches of precipitation and a bit over a foot of snow a year. It sits roadside off A Street East, right at the edge of town. No land manager or campground is recorded.
Winter scores best on record. Stay out of the water at the source; it will burn skin on contact. Being at the edge of town, the ground is likely someone's property. Access is not recorded, so ask before walking over. Nothing is listed for fees or camping. A photo is on file.
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 Vale 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.
- Setting
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the southeast.
- Highest ground nearby
- 375 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southeast
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 close to the US average of 65. It's higher than at 13% 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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Vale Hot Springs 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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