Haven Hot Springs

Commercial listing, informational only: Haven Hot Springs is a private, fee charging resort. Prices and hours below are the operator’s own published figures as of November 11, 2026, and this page makes no claim about day to day upkeep. Book ahead; there is no cell service at the resort.

The registry calls it Haven Lodge Hot Spring, and the sign on Highway 21 calls it Haven Hot Springs: the same spring, the same property, at 7655 Highway 21 in Lowman, on the South Fork Payette River corridor in Boise County. The federal thermal springs list carries the source at a maximum of 147 °F (registry point 44.077, -115.553), the USGS GEOTHERM file holds it as record 0025154 in Township 9 North, Range 8 East, Section 31, and the state geothermal dataset lists the same spring as a developed recreation site and prints this resort’s website in its own record.

What the registries describe as a hot vent, the resort has served since 1951 by its own account: a 75 by 30 foot mineral pool on a slope above the highway, let to one group at a time by reservation, with four motel rooms, camping, and a cafe, a short walk west of Kirkham Hot Springs.

Read this page as a traveler’s summary of a working business, not as a natural spring guide. The soak here is a pool, the access is a reservation, and the details that matter (price, hours, what is open this season) are the operator’s to set and change. Everything below is dated to the operator’s published pages as read on November 11, 2026, and the resort’s own site is the place to confirm before a drive up Highway 21.

Soak Stats

Place Information

Location and Access

Haven Hot Springs sits directly on Idaho Highway 21, the Ponderosa Pine Scenic Byway, about 4 miles east of Lowman and roughly 80 miles northeast of Boise by road, on the slope above the highway where it follows the South Fork Payette River. It is a drive up resort in every sense: park at the property, check in, and soak. The famous natural soak of the corridor, Kirkham Hot Springs, is a short walk east, close enough that the resort itself advertises the walk, and guests commonly pair a reserved private soak at Haven with the public pools at Kirkham.

Two practical notes belong with the directions. First, book before you drive: day soaking is by online reservation, and a current guide notes there is no cell service at the resort or along much of Highway 21 in the Lowman area, so a reservation made from home is the reliable kind.

Second, the resort sells 87 octane ethanol free gasoline, a genuinely useful stop on this corridor, but the operator notes the pump’s card reader is not working and staff must fill for you, and asks travelers to text ahead to (208) 793-0630 before making a trip for fuel (operator’s notice, November 11, 2026). Highway 21 is a mountain road; winter travelers should expect snow conditions between Idaho City and Lowman and check road reports, as with any Lowman trip.

The Soak

The big pool is the centerpiece: 75 by 30 feet of free flowing mineral water on the slope above the highway, with a view over the road to the South Fork Payette River, divided in practice into a hotter side the operator publishes at 101 to 104 °F and a cool side at 85 to 98 °F, the ranges shifting with season and weather.

The resort’s model is privacy rather than a public swim: a day reservation buys your group the pool to itself for the hour, during public hours of 8am to 10pm. Overnight guests get the better of the arrangement, with free access to the big pool at night and half price reserved soaks during the day.

The second soak is the quieter one, and for many guests the better one: each of the four motel rooms has its own private outdoor soaking tub in a fenced backyard, filled with the same mineral water, usable in any weather and at any hour of a stay. Rooms are published at a $185 minimum before tax and fees, with seasonal rates possible, and the resort is pet friendly

Campers (RV full hookup sites at $37 to $67, tent and car camping at $15 to $37, both plus $5 per camper or pet and 10% tax and handling, operator’s figures, November 11, 2026) share the overnight terms: half price reserved day soaks and free big pool access after 10pm. The cafe is the variable in the whole offer: it is seasonal, it was closed at the November 2026 research date, and the operator publishes a Fall 2026 reopening, so anyone counting on a meal should confirm on the resort’s site before the drive; Lowman’s other tables, including Sourdough Lodge, are a few miles west.

History

The pool dates to 1951 by the resort’s own account, which makes Haven one of the postwar generation of Idaho highway hot springs resorts: a big concrete pool on a scenic byway, built for the automobile traveler, in a corridor where geothermal water surfaces all through the Lowman townsite and the surrounding canyon. The spring’s paper trail is a survey trail.

Ross era geothermal work noted the Lowman country springs; Mitchell and others recorded this spring in 1980, preserving the curious note that its temperature was reported to have risen 5.5 °C in the previous eight years; the federal thermal springs list fixed it at 147 °F under the name Haven Lodge Hot Spring; and the state dataset, filing it as a developed recreation spring, added the resort’s website to its record, which is how the registry name and the trading name stay tied together in the official record itself. The state also carries the property as a small public water system, Haven Hot Springs, serving its rooms and sites. That is the documented history: a hot spring on a highway, a pool built in 1951, and a small resort still trading on both, three quarters of a century on.

Nearby Hot Springs

The nearest listing is Kirkham Hot Springs, the natural Forest Service soak a short walk east, with its hot waterfalls and river pools: the public, first come counterpart to Haven’s reserved pool, and the soak most Haven guests also visit. West down the corridor toward Garden Valley is Pine Flats Hot Springs, a riverside natural soak, and up the Middle Fork Payette road from Crouch is Bonneville Hot Springs. More South-Central Idaho hot springs →