Good books and magazines about hot springs:

The best basic references for hot springs in North America are Marjorie Gersh-Young's Hot Springs and Hot Pools of the Northwest, and Hot Springs and Hot Pools of the Southwest. (The first book also covers hot springs in western Canada, and some in the midwestern and eastern United States. The second book includes hot springs in Baja California. The latest editions also include Hawaii and Puerto Rico, with some of my photos from there and a few other places.) Both have very comprehensive coverage of all kinds of hot springs, from the most popular developed resorts, to the less-crowded natural springs out in the backcountry.

Another of my favorites is Evie Litton's Hiking Hot Springs in the Pacific Northwest. This more specialized book focuses on noncommercial, un- or semi-developed hot springs at the beginning or end of good hiking trails.

There are many other books about hot springs (there about a dozen others on my bookshelves -- the ones I don't have generally are obscure, dated, or technical), but the three books above should be a good start for those searching for hot springs to visit.

Web sites and other online information:

The following are some selected links to other sites I find particularly informative about hot springs in North America. Many of those sites have their own links lists, which together should take you to just about every hot springs site there is on the Internet (including some for places outside of North America, such as Japan and eastern Siberia).

California's Guide to Hot Springs
Steve Karl's site has lots of information and really great pictures for noncommercial springs through California, as well as links to Web sites of many of the commercial resorts there.

soak.net
soakersforum.com
The soak.net discussion area, and the new soakersforum.com, are probably the best places on the Web for online discussions about hot springs anywhere in North America (and occasionally beyond). soak.net also has links to many other hot springs sites.

There are also occasional discussions about hot springs recreation in Usenet newsgroups, but they are scattered across a wide range of groups focusing on other topics. Even in the groups with the most frequent hot springs discussions (rec.backcountry, rec.nude, and alt.nudism.moderated), you have to wade through a lot of irrelevant postings to find useful information about hot springs. Your best bet is to use the Google (formerly DejaNews) newsgroup archive to search for relevant Usenet postings.

my Hot Springs main page · my favorite springs, and others I've visited · 
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© 1999-2004, 2006-2009 Oscar Voss