Data report
34 American hot springs have no road to them
A hot spring listing rarely tells you whether you can drive to the water. We measured the drive to all 270 springs in our catalogue instead — and for 34 of them, the nearest drivable road is more than a quarter mile from the water.
Published August 2026 · Free to reuse with attribution
270
springs measured
across 23 states
34
with no road to the water
further than 0.25 mi out
What we found
Every figure on this page is computed from the published dataset at build time.
The median hot spring in the catalogue sits 0.02 miles from the nearest drivable road — which is to say, in its own car park. That is the normal case, and it is exactly why the exceptions matter: nothing on a typical listing tells you which spring is which.
In our catalogue today, 217 of 277 access descriptions are not backed by an operator website or by agreeing visitor reports. That is why we measure the road rather than rely on the label.
The extreme case is Barth Hot Springs in ID, 10.17 miles from Magruder Road. Google Maps will not return driving directions to it at all — it offers a multi-day walk instead.
| Distance from a road | Springs | Share of catalogue |
|---|---|---|
| More than 0.25 mi | 34 | 12.6% |
| More than 0.5 mi | 21 | 7.8% |
| More than 1 mi | 17 | 6.3% |
| More than 2 mi | 12 | 4.4% |
| More than 5 mi | 2 | 0.7% |
The 34 springs with no road to them
Straight-line miles from the spring to the nearest point on the drivable network. The walk in is longer.
| Spring | State | Miles out | Nearest road | Our listing now says |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barth Hot Springs | ID | 10.17 | Magruder Road | Hike-In |
| Stuart Hot Springs | ID | 5.68 | Fog Mountain Road | Hike-In |
| Iva Bell Hot Springs | CA | 4.52 | unnamed track | Hike-In (11 mi) |
| Jordan Hot Springs | NM | 4.32 | Upper Scorpion Camp Ground Road | Hike-In |
| Kwiskwis Hot Spring | ID | 3.96 | Meadow Creek Lookout Road | Hike-In |
| Willett Hot Springs | CA | 3.91 | Mutau OHV Road | Hike-In (9.5 mi) |
| Rainbow Hot Springs | CO | 3.54 | unnamed track | Hike-In (5.3 mi) |
| Goldmyer Hot Springs | WA | 3.13 | National Forest Development Road 9040 | Hike-In (5 mi) |
| Stanley Hot Springs | ID | 2.85 | Wilderness Gateway Loop A | Hike-In |
| Cox Hot Springs | ID | 2.66 | unnamed track | Hike-In |
| Skillern Hot Springs | ID | 2.55 | unnamed track | Hike-In (3 mi) |
| Shower Bath Springs | ID | 2.42 | National Forest Development Road 68 | Hike-In |
| Conundrum Hot Springs | CO | 1.93 | Forest Road 129.1 Montezuma | Hike-In (8.5 mi) |
| Arizona Hot Spring | AZ | 1.86 | Hoover Dam–Kingman Highway | Hike-In (2.5 mi) |
| Owl Creek Hot Springs | ID | 1.74 | unnamed track | Hike-In |
| Goldbug Hot Springs | ID | 1.4 | Salmon River Scenic Byway | Hike-In |
| Three Forks Hot Spring | OR | 1.02 | unnamed track | High Clearance/4x4 |
| Jerry Johnson Hot Springs | ID | 0.96 | Nez Perce National Historic Trail | Hike-In (1.3 mi) |
| Paulina Lake Hot Springs | OR | 0.83 | unnamed track | Hike-In |
| Bagby Hot Springs | OR | 0.74 | Forest Road 70 | Hike-In (1.5 mi) |
| McCauley Spring | NM | 0.6 | unnamed track | Hike-In (5 mi) |
| Hot Springs | TX | 0.48 | Hot Springs Road | Short Walk |
| Azure Spring | WY | 0.42 | unnamed track | Short Walk |
| Scenic Hot Springs | WA | 0.41 | unnamed track | Hike-In (2 mi) |
| Indian Hot Springs | ID | 0.38 | Indian Hot Springs Road | Short Walk |
| Weir Creek Hot Springs | ID | 0.33 | Nez Perce National Historic Trail | Short Walk |
| Bonneville Hot Springs | ID | 0.32 | Bonneville Trailhead Road | Short Walk |
| Manby Hot Springs | NM | 0.31 | unnamed track | Hike-In (3.4 mi) |
| Goldstrike Hot Springs | NV | 0.31 | unnamed track | Hike-In (2.65 mi) |
| Piedra River Hot Springs | CO | 0.3 | First Fork Road | Short Walk |
| Alpine Hot Springs | ID | 0.3 | unnamed track | Short Walk |
| Crab Cooker Hot Springs | CA | 0.28 | unnamed track | Short Walk |
| Terwilliger Hot Springs | OR | 0.28 | Aufderheide Drive | Short Walk |
| Hot Springs National Park | AR | 0.26 | Cedar Street | Short Walk |
By state: ID 14, OR 4, CA 3, CO 3, NM 3, WA 2, AR 1, AZ 1, NV 1, TX 1, WY 1.
How we measured it
So you can check the work, or repeat it.
- Every spring in the catalogue carries a verified coordinate, most of them from Google Place data.
- Each coordinate was snapped to the nearest edge of the OSRM driving network, which is built on OpenStreetMap data. All 270 resolved; none failed.
- The distance reported is straight-line from the spring to that snapped point. It is a lower bound on the walk in, not a trail distance — Conundrum Hot Springs measures 1.93 miles here and is an 8.5-mile hike in practice.
Limits worth stating. A snapped point is the nearest routable road, which is not always the road people actually use, and OpenStreetMap coverage of forest tracks is uneven. This measures whether a car can get close — not whether the trail is safe, legal, or open in winter. Our catalogue of 270 springs is not a census of every hot spring in the United States.
Take the data
All 270 springs, not just the remote ones. CC BY 4.0 — use it anywhere, with a link back.
Citing this
US Natural Hot Springs. “34 American hot springs have no road to them.” August 2026. https://www.usnaturalhotsprings.com/reports/road-access
Writing about this and want a figure checked, a specific spring verified, or the numbers cut a different way? alex@usnaturalhotsprings.com.
Why we built this
Every listing on this site shows which facts are sourced and which are not, and road access was the field where that gap did the most damage — it is the one people act on before they leave the house. Measuring it was the only way to replace an assumption with a number. Browse all 270 springs →