Glance out several hundreds feet across the meadow in front of you and you'll find an enclosed hot springs, bubbling with hot water and spewing out steam. On July 7, 1806, this "boiling hot spring" provided a late afternoon dinner stop for Captain William Clark, Sacagawea, and their return party as they crossed this "hot spring valley" en route to Camp Fortunate to retrieve the canoes and supplies they had cached the previous summer.

"...we arived at a Boiling Spring Situated about 100 paces from a large Easterly fork of the Small river which heads in the Snowey Mountains to the SE. & SW of the Springs. this Spring (15 yds in circumc, boils up all over the bottom which is Stoney) contains a very considerable quantity of water, and actually blubbers with heat for 20 paces below where it rises.. I directt Sergt. Pryor and John Shields to put each a piece of meat in the water of different Sises. the one about the Size of my 3 fingers Cooked dun in 25 minits the other much thicker was 32 minits before it became Sufficiently dun." - Captain W. Clark, July 7, 1806

A Well-Used Hot Springs

In 1833, fur trapper Warren Angus Ferris and his small company visited this site.

"The Indians" he wrote "have made a succession of little dams, from the upper end to the river; and one finds baths of every temperature, from boiling hot, to that of the river, which is too cold for bathing at any season."

Hot Springs & Big Hole Valley

These hot springs bear witness to the geothermic activity in the region. A fault system dropped the Big Hole Valley and raised the surrounding mountains. Fractured rock of the earth's crust allows water to percolate deep underground where it is heated and then rises to the surface as a hot springs.

Clark excerpt taken from: The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Volume Eight, Gary Mouton, Editor.

Ferris excerpt taken from: Life in the Rocky Mountains, Northland Press, 1983.

Erected by Camp Fortunate Chapter, Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation; Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.