Mammoth Hot Springs
Mammoth Hot Springs is the big complex of hot springs on a travertine hill in Yellowstone National Park, Gallatin County, with a measured temperature hot enough to scald. It sits right beside Upper Terrace Drive. People come to look at the travertine, and there is a campground under a mile away. Park Service land, public access open.
Upper Terrace Drive runs within twenty feet of the springs, so this is a roadside stop. The springs rise on a hill of travertine. The elevation is around sixty-six hundred feet. Snowfall runs a bit over nine feet a year; the mean for the year is in the upper thirties. Precipitation is about two feet a year.
Best months on record are December through February. Mammoth Campground, less than a mile off, is the camping on record. The water is scalding; keep to established ground. Access is open and roadside, no fee recorded. With the road that near, winter access comes down to plowing, and the park sets that.
The travertine hill built up over thousands of years as hot water cooled at the surface and dropped calcium carbonate, the mineral that builds travertine. By one estimate more than two tons of it come up in solution every day, and the sheer number of vents keeps the travertine growing. The complex sits next to Fort Yellowstone and the Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District.
Liberty Cap, the 37-foot cone of a spring that went dormant long ago, has hardly changed since William Henry Jackson photographed it in 1871. The bare hillside behind it has filled in with trees.
Drag to compare.
1871: William Henry Jackson, Yellowstone National Park archive, public domain. 2021: Steven Pavlov, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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 Mammoth 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 southwest.
- Highest ground nearby
- 190 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.
Landsat's thermal camera passed over on a clear winter day, December 3, 2022. This spring's heat shows up from about 440 miles up. The brightest yellow marks the warmest ground, roughly 9°F warmer than the land around it.
Drag to compare. The view is about 2½ miles across, and each thermal pixel covers roughly 300 feet of ground, so individual pools blur into one warm patch.
Thermal: Landsat 8/9 surface temperature, USGS (public domain), via Microsoft Planetary Computer. Aerial: USGS The National Map. More springs seen from space.
That's about 1½ times the US average of 65. It's higher than at 61% 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 Starting Tuesday April 15th, the Mammoth Campground is open and reservations are required. For reservations at the campgrounds managed by Yellowstone National Park Lodges (Fishing Bridge RV Park, Bridge Bay, Canyon, Madison, and Grant Village campgrounds), please visit the Yellowstone National Park Lodges Camping website. Recreation There are many recreational opportunities in the Mammoth Hot Springs and the North area. Visit these pages to learn more:Boating Fishing Hiking Phot...
Mammoth Hot Springs sits at 6,589 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 26% stronger than at sea level, so bring sunscreen and drink more water than you normally would.
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Mammoth Hot Springs is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear. The water is dangerously hot, so bring water shoes and test pools carefully. Cold air temperatures make a changing robe or warm layers essential.
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