Hot Springs
The orange dot marks the spring, in a frame about three quarters of a mile wide.
Recorded under the bare name Hot Springs, this is a thermal point in the Carbon County corner of Yellowstone National Park. Red Lodge is the nearest town on file. No temperature has been measured here, or at least none reached the record, which lists the water only as warm. That rules it out as a known soak. Park land, publicly accessible. Deep backcountry.
Eleven and a half miles of backcountry lie between this spring and the Northeast Entrance Road, the nearest road on record. Nothing shorter is listed. The ground sits near eight thousand feet. Snowfall is enormous, close to fourteen feet a year; the yearly mean hovers a little above freezing. Annual precipitation runs moderate.
There is no best-months entry for this one and no temperature. Snowfall that heavy leaves a short summer window, and the park can say what is passable. Threemile Campground, about seventeen miles away, is the nearest camping listed. Access is open. No road comes closer than a long backcountry walk, so treat this as a map point for the curious.
USGS hasn't flown a detailed laser scan here yet, so this view comes from aerial photos and older elevation data.
- Setting
- Canyon floor
- Steep ground climbs away on both sides of the spring.
- Highest ground nearby
- 362 ft above the spring
- Within a quarter mile, to the southwest
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 about 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 63% 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 Threemile Campground is located just three miles from the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park, and 50 miles from the full service gateway community of Cody, in northwestern Wyoming. The area is an ideal destination for a family getaway, with many opportunities for outdoor recreation. Hard-sided camp trailers and RVs are required.Recreation Great opportunities for hiking, fishing, scenic driving and wildlife viewing are available around the campground. The North Fork of the Sho...
Hot Springs sits at 7,948 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 32% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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