Sullivan Hot Springs

Documentation record: Sullivan Hot Springs is a private homestead site with no documented pool and no public access. This page records what the official registries and the homestead record say about the spring, and nothing beyond it.

Sullivan Hot Springs appears in the federal thermal springs list at 106 °F, on the Salmon River in Custer County, along State Highway 75 about two miles west of Clayton. The U.S. Geological Survey’s GEOTHERM file carries the same spring in T11N R17E Sec 27 at 41 °C, the federal figure exactly, the state geothermal dataset carries it at the same point, and the federal place-names record verifies the feature. Four records, one spring. Most names in those registries are only names. This one was an address.

A Sullivan family homesteaded these springs in 1885, and people were born at “Sullivan Hot Springs, Idaho” into the 1920s. Read this page as a documentation record for a real spring with a real, documented homestead history, not as a destination guide: no pool, resort, or public access is documented anywhere for Sullivan Hot Springs, at any date, and no agency manages it as a recreation site.

Soak Stats

Place Information

Location and Access

The spring sits on the main stem of the Salmon River in the Stanley to Challis corridor, on the highway west of Clayton. That placement matters: the East Fork of the Salmon joins the river east of Clayton, and writing that files this spring under “East Fork” is loose geography. Sullivan is a main-river spring, in working ranch country along Highway 75, with the family cemetery that carries its name still in place beside the highway.

Beyond that, this listing deliberately does not go. No published route to the spring exists, no source describes a visit, and who holds the parcel today is not confirmed in any source consulted. The position is a matter of public record in the registries linked above, but a set of coordinates is not an invitation, and on a private homestead site it is not permission. Anyone with a genuine reason to visit should establish land ownership and get the landowner’s permission first.

Is There a Soak Here?

The honest answer is that no source describes one, at any date. No soaking guide covers this spring, no trip report or photograph of a visit exists in any source consulted, and no agency page presents it as a place to go. The state dataset itself carries the question unanswered in its own record for this spring: “Is this an undeveloped recreation site?” The documented life of the place was domestic, a homestead family’s home ground, not a resort, and nothing consulted records public bathing ever being offered. If a landowner confirmation or a credible field report ever surfaces, this page will be updated.

History

The spring’s history is a family’s. The Sawtooth Interpretive & Historical Association’s oral-history archive describes Bill Sullivan, interviewed in 1988, “whose roots trace back to 1885 when his grandparents homesteaded the Sullivan Hot Springs near Clayton,” and the same archive holds a short tour of the springs recorded in 1991. A descendant was still walking the place with a camera a century after the homestead claim.

The genealogy record fills in the middle years. Custer County cemetery records document Joanne O’Sullivan, born 17 Nov 1895 at “Sullivan Hot Springs, Clayton, Idaho,” to Sarah and Cornelius O’Sullivan, and Thomas Eugene Bradshaw, born 28 Jul 1920 at “Sullivan Hot Springs, Idaho,” whose mother was Sadie Sullivan, a daughter of Cornelius J. Sullivan. Children born at the address across three decades, under both spellings of the family name: that is a homestead community, not a resort era. The Sullivan Hot Springs Cemetery still stands on Highway 75 at Clayton, carrying the spring’s name in the federal place-names record alongside the spring itself.

The registries carry the water forward in parallel. Young and Mitchell’s 1973 state inventory listed the spring’s discharge at 70 gallons a minute, GEOTHERM holds it as record 0081105 at 41 °C, and the state dataset’s modern record repeats a staff question nobody has answered: whether this is an undeveloped recreation site. Nothing consulted records when the family’s tenure ended, whether any structure survives, or a pool ever existing. That silence is part of the record, and this listing leaves it standing rather than filling it in.

Nearby Hot Springs

The nearest full listing is Challis Hot Springs, a developed resort spring in the same county about 20 miles northeast, with pools and public hours. It is a different spring entirely, and none of its facilities belong to this record; it is simply the closest place in Custer County where a soak is actually on offer. Robinson Bar, on the East Fork side of Clayton, has no listing on this site and is a separate spring besides. More East-Central Idaho hot springs →