How Many Hot Springs Are in the US? Our Data & Methodology
The United States has roughly 1,661 documented thermal springs (NOAA/USGS national inventory, 1980 — decommissioned 2025). That figure counts every natural hydrothermal feature at 68°F or above — geysers, fumaroles, mud pots, and scalding seeps — most of which cannot be soaked in. The number of real, visitable soaking destinations is far smaller: only a few hundred nationwide. HotSpringsFind currently lists 327 verified soaking destinations across 14 states, each checked against official and community sources.
Why Every Website Reports a Different Number
Hot springs sites disagree because they count different things. There are really two answers:
| What's counted | Typical count | Who counts it |
|---|---|---|
| All documented thermal features — springs, geysers, fumaroles, mud pots, scalding seeps ≥68°F | ~1,661–1,723 | NOAA/USGS inventory; census-style aggregators |
| Developed / commercial springs — resorts and managed pools | ~250–300 | Industry association directories |
| Visitable soaking destinations — wild pools + resorts you can actually visit | a few hundred | Curated directories (estimates range 75–300+) |
| HotSpringsFind — verified soaking destinations | 327 | This directory |
Neither side is wrong — they answer different questions. But if your question is "where can I actually soak?", the census numbers are misleading: a fumarole or a 190°F vent is a thermal spring in the federal data, yet it is not a destination. We publish the visitable count because that is the number a traveler needs.
How Every Record Is Verified
Every record in this directory passes a two-stage independent review:
- Research pass — the spring's existence, coordinates, county, operating status, fees, and policies are checked against official sources (USFS, BLM, NPS, state parks, resort and operator sites) and community evidence (recent trip reports, forums, Reddit discussions). Facts that can't be verified are labeled as reported or removed.
- Audit pass — a separate review re-checks the high-stakes claims: open vs. closed, public vs. private, real vs. mislocated. In our most recent audit, 167 of 206 newly added records were confirmed unchanged and 39 received evidence-backed corrections.
205 of 400 records carry a named verification source link directly on their page — so you can check the same source we did rather than trusting us blindly.
What We List — and What We Refuse to List
Our dataset contains 400 records: 327 verified destinations plus 73 documented-but-restricted records. The restricted records are real places — closed resorts, private land, prohibited soaks, and dangerous thermal features — kept on the site (de-indexed from search engines) because people search for them and deserve accurate warnings instead of stale advice telling them to visit.
We do not list unnamed thermal seeps, geothermal vents, wells, or features that exist only in geological survey data. A numbered vent in a federal inventory is not a destination — and padding a directory with non-soakable features is how other sites reach inflated counts like 1,700+.
Verified Destinations by State
| State | Verified destinations | Documented restricted |
|---|---|---|
| California | 73 | 17 |
| Idaho | 63 | 3 |
| Nevada | 31 | 21 |
| Oregon | 30 | 5 |
| Montana | 23 | 4 |
| Colorado | 19 | 3 |
| Alaska | 17 | 7 |
| New Mexico | 16 | 2 |
| Utah | 15 | 1 |
| Arizona | 13 | 1 |
| Washington | 11 | 6 |
| Wyoming | 11 | 3 |
| Arkansas | 3 | 0 |
| Texas | 2 | 0 |
| Total | 327 | 73 |
Of the verified destinations, 151 are listed as free to access — see the free hot springs directory for that subset.
The Numbers Behind the Numbers
The ~1,661 figure quoted everywhere traces to a single source: the NOAA "Thermal Springs List for the United States"(Berry, Grim & Ikelman, 1980), compiled from USGS survey work including Waring's Professional Paper 492. The original publication counted 1,702 locations in 23 states; the digital dataset contains 1,661 records. It was never updated and was formally decommissioned in May 2025 — surviving only in data archives (DOI 10.25921/c8p0-zs06). Older still, the USGS's 1937 Water-Supply Paper 679-B documented "more than 1,000 thermal-spring localities."
That 45-year-old inventory counts every natural hydrothermal surface feature at or above 68°F — including Yellowstone's thousands of vents, fumaroles, and mud pots (Yellowstone alone has over 10,000 individual hydrothermal features in the National Park Service inventory). It is the correct answer to "how many thermal features exist" and the wrong answer to "where can I soak."
Report a Correction
Springs change — access opens and closes, fees rise, roads wash out. If you find something wrong, tell us: contact@hotspringsfind.com. Corrections backed by a source are applied fastest.
Directory data last reviewed September 2026 · Records include named verification sources where available.