Wind River Canyon Spring
Four or five miles from Thermopolis and a few steps off South Yellowstone Road, Wind River Canyon Spring is a warm spring in Hot Springs County, Wyoming. The water is tepid, about what a swimming pool reaches in late summer. No ownership is on record and neither is any public access. The water sample on file dates to 1970.
Low country by Wyoming standards, under 4,400 feet, and dry, with about a foot of rain a year and a modest amount of snow. Temperatures average near fifty. The spring lies roadside, roughly 120 feet from South Yellowstone Road. No land unit or designation appears on file, so what the ground around it is and who manages it are open questions.
Winter shows up as the preferred stretch, and with snowfall this light that works out fine. No one has said whether walking in is legal, so treat access as an open question and ask locally. That temperature came from a 1970 survey and may not hold now. The water is mildly warm at best. No camping or fee is recorded.
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 Wind River Canyon 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
- Hillside
- The spring sits on a steep slope that climbs to the southeast.
- Highest ground nearby
- 187 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 15% 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 Wind River Canyon Spring is slightly alkaline (pH 8.0) with 812 mg/L total dissolved solids. It is notably rich in calcium (may support bone density and joint health), magnesium (known for muscle relaxation and stress relief), and sulfate (traditionally used for skin conditions and inflammation).
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Wind River Canyon Spring is road-accessible, so you can bring more gear.
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