Latty Hot Spring
Private LandOpen seasons
- Access
- None documented; the spring was covered and piped to a homestead, and the parcel's ownership is not verified
- Price
- None documented; no operator
- Accommodations
- None
Plan Your Visit
Documentation record: Latty Hot Spring was covered and piped to a nearby homestead in the inventory era, and no public access information is verified. This page records what the official geothermal registries say about the spring, and nothing beyond it.
Latty Hot Spring appears in the federal thermal springs list at 144 °F, in the southern Mount Bennett Hills north of Glenns Ferry, in Elmore County. The U.S. Geological Survey’s GEOTHERM file carries the same spring in T3S R10E Sec 31, the Idaho Department of Water Resources geothermal dataset holds a full record for it under the same section, and the state inventory in Water Information Bulletin No. 30 places it in Pleistocene basalt on a northwest-trending fault. The registries agree on the spring, the section, and the setting. They do not agree on its temperature, and this page prints that disagreement rather than settling it (see Soak Stats).
Read this page as a documentation record for a real, inventoried spring that was put to private domestic use, not as a destination guide. The state dataset’s comment on the record states that the spring was covered and piped to a nearby homestead, and no source documents a pool, a visit, or public access at any date. Its value is the record itself, and this listing is deliberately as short as the record is.
Soak Stats
| Location | Southern Mount Bennett Hills north of Glenns Ferry, Elmore County (general area only; see the access note below) |
| Soak type | Inventoried natural hot spring, covered and piped to a nearby homestead in the inventory era. No soaking pool is documented |
| Water temperature | The registries disagree. The USGS field record behind GEOTHERM and the state dataset gives 131 °F (55 °C), from a sample taken July 5, 1972; the federal thermal springs list gives 144 °F (62 °C). The state dataset notes the measured figure is probably lower than the temperature at the discharge point. All figures are inventory-era; no modern measurement exists |
| Pool | None documented. The spring was covered, and no source describes a pool, tub, or soaking spot at this spring |
| Public access | None documented. No source grants or describes public access to the spring itself, and the parcel’s ownership is not verified |
| Fee | None documented; no operator and no developed recreation site |
| Facilities | None documented. The only improvement any source records is the homestead piping |
Place Information
| Address | No street address exists. The spring rises in the foothills on the southern side of the Mount Bennett Hills, in the country the Bennett Mountain and Morrow Reservoir quadrangles map |
| County | Elmore County |
| Land manager | Not verified. No source consulted names an owner, a parcel, or a managing agency for the site; the one documented use is a private homestead capture recorded by the state dataset |
Location and Access
The spring’s inventory point sits in the foothills at the base of the Mount Bennett Hills, about 11 miles north of Glenns Ferry in a straight line and about two miles southeast of the point the registries give for Prince Albert Hot Springs. It is dry foothill country above the Snake River Plain’s valley floor, range and farm ground at the base of the hills, and no road or trail to the spring is published anywhere.
Beyond that, this listing deliberately does not go. The state dataset records that the spring was covered and piped to a nearby homestead, which is a private domestic use, and ownership of the section the spring rises in is not confirmed in any source consulted. The public-land story of the springs farther west in these hills is theirs, not this spring’s, and it is not borrowed here.
The coordinates are public record in the registries linked above, but a set of coordinates is not an invitation, and on land of unconfirmed ownership it is not permission. Anyone with a genuine reason to visit should establish land ownership and, if the land is private, get the landowner’s permission first.
Is There a Soak Here?
The honest answer is that no source describes one, and the one disposition statement in the record points the other way: a covered spring piped to a homestead is a water supply, not a bathing place. No soaking guide covers this spring, no trip report or photograph of a visit exists in any source consulted, and the aggregator pages that carry its name repeat the registry row and nothing more.
The survey record behind the registries is a single USGS sampling visit on July 5, 1972, which produced a full water chemistry panel and the 131 °F field figure; no later visit to the spring itself is recorded in any source consulted, and whether the spring still flows today is not verified. If a landowner confirmation, a county record, or a credible field report ever surfaces, this page will be updated.
History
Latty Hot Spring enters the written record through geology, not settlement. The state inventory’s principal reference for the spring is Malde and others, 1963, a geologic study of the Bennett Mountain country, and Young and Mitchell’s 1973 bulletin carries it as a one-line inventory entry: Pleistocene basalt, a northwest-trending fault, no development noted. USGS field crews sampled its water on July 5, 1972, and that single visit anchors the GEOTHERM record, the state dataset record, and the chemistry tables all at once.
Geothermal researchers kept returning to its water on paper. Mabey’s 1983 USGS assessment calculated a reservoir temperature of 124 °C for the Latty system, the 2008 national geothermal assessment estimated a mean reservoir temperature of 110 °C with no power development of any kind, and a 2016 Idaho National Laboratory study of the South Mount Bennett Hills prospect found Latty’s waters among the hottest in the area by geothermometry, with a reservoir estimate near 197 °C.
Those are estimates of heat at depth, not measurements of the spring, and no plant, well field, or development ever followed them; the spring’s only documented use remains the homestead piping the state dataset records. The registries also spell the name two ways, Latty Hot Spring in the federal list and GNIS, Latty Hot Springs in the state and GEOTHERM records, for the one spring. Who the spring was named for is not verified in any source consulted.
Nearby Hot Springs
The nearest full listing is Prince Albert Hot Springs, a separate registry record about two miles west in the same hills, a public primitive soak on documented public land, and the spring the federal list calls Coyote. Prince Albert and Latty are different springs with opposite access stories, and none of the Prince Albert listing’s facts belong to this record. Farther southeast, White Arrow Hot Springs, about 18 miles away, is the third named spring of the same Mount Bennett Hills geothermal prospect and has its own full listing on this site. More South-Central Idaho hot springs →
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you soak at Latty Hot Spring?
No source documents a pool or public access, and the state dataset records that the spring was covered and piped to a nearby homestead. This listing is a documentation record, not a destination guide.
How hot is Latty Hot Spring?
The registries disagree. The USGS field record behind GEOTHERM and the state dataset gives 131 °F (55 °C) from the 1972 sample; the federal thermal springs list gives 144 °F (62 °C). The state dataset notes the measured figure is probably lower than the temperature at the spring's discharge point. Either way the source water is scalding, well above soaking temperature, and no modern reading exists.
Where is Latty Hot Spring?
In the southern Mount Bennett Hills north of Glenns Ferry, in Elmore County, Idaho. Because access and ownership are unverified, this listing gives the general area only; the precise position sits in the public federal registries linked above.
Is Latty Hot Spring the same as Prince Albert Hot Springs or Coyote Hot Spring?
No. Prince Albert Hot Springs, which the federal list calls Coyote Hot Spring, is a separate record about two miles west, a public primitive soak with its own full listing on this site. Latty is a different spring, in a different section, with its own registry records.
Was Latty Hot Spring ever developed?
Only for private domestic use, as far as any source shows. The state dataset records that it was covered and piped to a nearby homestead. Geothermal studies assessed the heat at depth under it several times, but no power plant, resort, or public facility was ever built, and none is documented as planned beyond the assessments themselves.
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