Fountain Paint Pot
Fountain Paint Pot is a roadside thermal area in Yellowstone National Park, Gallatin County, Wyoming. OpenStreetMap labels the same point Silex Spring. The water on file is hot, well past what skin can take. West Yellowstone is the town on record, under twelve miles away. It sits on National Park Service land with open public access, a few steps from the Grand Loop Road.
Roadside in the plainest sense, a hundred and thirty-odd feet off the Grand Loop Road. Call it 7,300 feet up. Cold is the climate here, with something like a hundred and forty inches of snow and a yearly average in the mid thirties. National Park Service land inside Yellowstone.
December through February are marked best on the record. That is peak snow, so the practical question is what the park keeps open in winter. Roadside access, open to the public. Closest camping on file is about twenty-two miles away at Island Park, the Big Springs group area. The water is hot enough to burn. Do not touch it.
The Fountain Paint Pots thermal area holds a group of geysers. Fountain Geyser is the dominant one. Morning Geyser, which erupts from a vent close to Fountain's, is larger but sits inactive most years. OpenStreetMap records this point under the name Silex Spring.
Bubbling mud at Fountain Paint Pot in Yellowstone's Lower Geyser Basin. Visitors in the 1880s walked right out onto the crust. A boardwalk keeps everyone back now, and the mud runs pinker than Haynes's gray print lets on.
Drag to compare.
c. 1886: F. Jay Haynes, Rijksmuseum, public domain. 2015: Jim Peaco, Yellowstone National Park, public domain.
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 Fountain Paint Pot.
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
- Open ground
- Flat, open ground all around.
- Highest ground nearby
- 32 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the east
A slice through the ground from south to north, about 0.6 miles end to end.
Elevation data: USGS 3D Elevation Program. Aerial imagery: USGS The National Map. Public domain.
That's about 2½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 95% 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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Overview Big Springs Group Area is located 22 miles south of West Yellowstone, Montana in beautiful Island Park, Idaho at an approximate elevation of 6,300 feet. Visitors love Island Park for its world-class fishing and outstanding scenery and wildlife viewing opportunities.Recreation Big Springs is the headwaters of Henry's Fork and is one of the largest springs in the country. Henry's Fork is considered one of the best fly-fishing streams in the nation. Fishermen cast for rainbow and brook...
Fountain Paint Pot sits at 7,307 feet above sea level, way above the mile-high mark. You may not feel the altitude strongly, but hot water still dehydrates you faster at elevation. UV is about 29% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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Fountain Paint Pot is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water runs hot, so extra hydration is key. Cold air temperatures make a changing robe or warm layers essential.
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