Alpine Warm Spring

Closure record: Alpine Warm Spring no longer exists as a soak. The state geothermal dataset states it plainly: the spring is now under Palisades Reservoir. This page documents what the official registries recorded about the spring, and what happened to it.

Alpine Warm Spring appears in the federal thermal springs list at 99 °F, on the Snake River at the south end of what is now Palisades Reservoir in Bonneville County. The U.S. Geological Survey’s GEOTHERM file carries the same spring at 37 °C (about 99 °F) in T2S R46E Sec 19. Three registries, one spring, one point on the map. The Idaho Department of Water Resources geothermal dataset then closes the story in a single comment on its record: “Spring is now under Palisades Reservoir.”

Palisades Dam, a Bureau of Reclamation dam on the Snake River, was completed in 1957. As the reservoir filled behind it, the water rose over the spring site at the reservoir’s south end, and Alpine Warm Spring passed from a place a person could visit into a line in the datasets. Read this page as a closure and history record for a real, inventoried spring, written so the record survives somewhere other than a spreadsheet.

Soak Stats

Place Information

Location and Access

The spring rose on the Snake River in the canyon country at the south end of today’s reservoir, a few miles from the Wyoming line. The nearest town is Alpine, Wyoming, roughly six or seven miles southwest in a straight line; the spring itself is in Idaho, in Bonneville County, whatever the town’s state suggests. Before the dam, this was river corridor. After 1957 it was reservoir, and the reach of shore nearest the spring is now the Palisades project shoreline of water, silt, and drawdown mud.

There is no access to describe, because there is nothing to reach. The registry coordinates for Alpine Warm Spring, a matter of public record in the datasets linked above and on this site’s USGS GPS coordinates page, mark a point that is open water when the reservoir is full. At extreme low water the site is silt-covered shore. One visitor account, posted as a comment on a hot springs aggregator, describes searching the exposed shore in late October and finding nothing. That is an unverified anecdote, but it matches the state dataset’s flat summary: the spring is under Palisades Reservoir.

History

The documented life of Alpine Warm Spring is a registry life. Federal surveyors measured it for the national thermal inventory at 99 °F, the U.S. Geological Survey carried it in its GEOTHERM compilation (record 0015279) at 37 °C, and the state geothermal dataset holds it still, with the disposition noted. Behind those entries sits one hard date: Palisades Dam was completed in 1957, and the reservoir that filled behind it is what ended the spring as a visitable place.

The only narrative thread beyond the registries comes from visitor comments on hot springs aggregator pages, and this listing prints it as what it is: reported local memory. Those accounts describe a man-made soaking structure at the site in the 1950s, built to catch the warm water, and say it was destroyed when the dam was built, with the remains buried under water and silt. No agency document, newspaper account, or dated photograph confirming the structure was found in the research for this page, so the story stands here as memory attached to a documented spring, not as established history. If a Bureau of Reclamation record or a local-history source ever confirms it, this page will be updated.

Nearby Hot Springs

Nothing soaks at the south end of Palisades Reservoir today. Bonneville County’s other documentation record is Brockman Creek Hot Spring, an inventoried warm spring north of Grays Lake whose record is likewise datasets rather than pools. For actual soaking in this corner of Idaho, the developed springs are far southwest in the Preston and Lava Hot Springs country, where listings like Maple Grove Hot Springs and Bear River Hot Springs offer real pools and public hours. More South-East Idaho hot springs →