Virgin River Spring
Virgin River Spring is a tepid spring on the edge of Hurricane in Washington County, under three miles from town. A 1968 sample shows mildly salty water with chloride as the marker. It is in the USGS thermal inventory and has a photograph on file. Ownership and access were never recorded, which for a spring this close to town is worth finding out before you walk in.
The approach is under half a mile on foot from West State Street. This is the lowest elevation of any spring in this group, not much above twenty-seven hundred feet, in a hot dry climate where snow is a rare event and rain barely reaches eight inches a year. No land unit appears on file.
The record favors December through February, which in this part of Utah means mild days. Red Cliffs Campground is four or five miles away. The water is cool for soaking and its chemistry is nearly sixty years old. Check who owns the ground before entering.
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 Virgin River 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.
- Setting
- Gentle slope
- The ground tilts gently up to the west.
- Highest ground nearby
- 163 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the west
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 about 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 40% 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 Virgin River Spring contains 988 mg/L total dissolved solids.
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Overview Red Cliffs Recreation Area includes a campground, day use areas, a non-motorized trail system, and interpreted public use sites. Dinosaurs left their footprints, now visible in the sandstone. Ancestral Puebloans lived here in the 10th century, growing corn, beans, and squash along Quail and Leeds Creek. Mid-19th century pioneers farmed here, supplying the area’s silver miners with food. Located within the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area, the Recreation Area is managed to cons...
Virgin River Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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