Secrets of groundwater: Thousand Springs State Park and the amazing Snake River Plain Aquifer, Idaho 

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As a teenager I traveled across Southern Idaho before the freeways were built in the western US. One time was just with my mom for a vacation trip. She stopped somewhere in the Hagerman area to read a road sign about the springs. I was amazed at the idea of an underground river as the sign called it. Your video helps to understand the geology of the area. The always thought this the prettiest part of Southern Idaho. The most exciting place in Southern Idaho on my first trip through there was Massacre Rocks. We were moving from VA to Seattle on that trip. There was a motel at the rocks that Dad decided to stay at that night. I was 13 at that time. Dad said I could climb the rocks after dinner. He said just watch out for the rattle snakes and off I went. Mom allowed it because growing up in VA I was used to watching out for poisonous snakes in the woods near our house that the kids all played in. I was amazed on top of the rocks just how far you can see from the top. I not only am learning about the geology from your videos but also remembering events from traveling the west through my life. Thanks for these videos.

That is just so cool! So the water is traveling underground along old lava filled riverbed, for ~150 years. Blows my mind! I've been there before but that level of detail changes the picture of it significantly for me. TY!

I drove the scenic byway in October and continue to marvel at Thousand Springs--just like I did 50 years ago as a HS student.

Thanks! My grandparents had a farm near Hagerman. When I was a kid (50 years ago) we swam in the crystal clear water of small lakes below Thousand Springs . Brought back some wonderful memories!

Permeability vs. porosity, that demo taught me something.

That is amazing it takes 150-200 years for the water to transport to these springs. Keep up the great work 👍

The basalts pushed the Snake River to the south, making pillows and becoming conduits for groundwater, which then drains into the Snake River. Cool.

My wife and I found this place because of a conversation we had with Jay at the Thousand Springs visitor center. What a super guy and a wealth of local information. He also spoke fondly of you and your field trips to the area. Another great video.

That's just amazing. Four years in Idaho, never knew about these springs. The shear amount of water coursing through the springs is incredible. This is something I'm going to have to go see for myself.

Really enjoy your videos. I am a retired UK linguist and now have time to indulge other interests. I do not have a scientific brain, so I appreciate how well you present your subject and make it accessible to the likes of me. Thank you.

Great stuff! Appreciate your simple yet elegant illustrations. Thanks, Shawn!

This is a beautiful area. When I was a kid living in Southern Idaho I spent a lot of time in this area fishing.

So interesting! Never even heard of this place. HNY Shawn.

Thank you Shawn. Good job!

Great job, can’t wait to see this area in my future geology travels.

Thank you. This is fascinating and was very clearly presented. Much appreciated.

Amazing pictures of the area before it was re engineered to harvest the water flow. Hence the "Thousand Springs"name. That is a story by itself.

Driven past this area a hundred times. Going to stop and watch your video while standing there next trip.

Landmannalaugar in the Icelandic highlands has an area where water coming off the mountains percolates through a lava flow which results in hot springs along the edge of the flow. Great place to camp and soak out after hiking all day.

Nice spot with so many natural springs. Very interesting explanation. Nice to think we could have a 200 yr old glass of water there.

Good Stuff! I appreciate your mix of hard science and general explanations. This park is managed by Idaho Power (in cooperation with other agencies). They maintain many sites like this that give visitors great opportunities to see the geology close up without a long hike. It's well worth walking around a bit when you come to events on the island. Thanks!

That was basically my back yard growing up, my dad ran that power plant for many years. Thank you Shawn! Great video!

Thank you, Shawn. I am about to retire from the ICP and have in the past told people that we are doing what we do in order to keep the people who drink the water below Thousand Springs from glowing in the dark. I know that it would not happen, but it makes for a bit of humor. Protecting the source of the water is a very important project and I feel that the risk that we experience from the radioactive waste is worth it.

I just recently found your wonderful videos! I've seen water coming out of springs and always wondered about it. There is a spring coming out of mountains not far from me. It is tested by the powers that be and people come to it with gallon jugs!

Interesting how the lava interacting with water result in pillow basalts that so increase the permeability of the deposits. That was a great lesson Professor, thank you.

Montana has a simular spring in Great Falls Mt called Grint Springs. The springs flow 154 million gallons per day forming the shortest River in the world (the Roe) the water is 54° year around and also has a hatchery.

Thanks Shawn! We were in Twin Fails last June and visited Thousand Springs. Your explanation about the pillow lava helped me visualize the process.

Wow this was a great video I wanted to make one for our aquifer here in Idaho 😄 sharing! Think you could make a part 2 about recharge why we should do it and how our aquifer is depleting and the effects it has on water quality? Regardless great video thanks!

Another fascinating video! Thank you Shawn!

Many thanks for your teaching. I'd love to see you do something about the San Luis Valley, which I've been told is sitting on the largest aquifer in North America.

Fascinating, thanks.

Happy to see you! Really cool explanation, and pretty area. The Roadside Guide you coauthored is a great tool for exploring, and I intend to visit again. Thank you Shawn! Hope 2023 is a good year for your family and you.

been here a 1000 times but you explain it well :P

I've always wanted to visit this area. Thanks for the informative video with the mind-blowing footage of all those springs :-)

Love your geology adventures ❤. Thx Sir Willsey ✌

This is a great video presentation that has certainly helped my limited understanding. I have often pondered the genesis of springs in many intermountain areas. I live in Salt Lake, but, during CoVid, I was drawn to the geology of eastern Washington by a prof from Ellensburg. I’ve worked my way (virtually) westward back to the Snake. I hope to be able to travel and explore the places and visit the features you’ve been visiting. Thanks, and Go Aggies.

happy new years to ya Shawn. Idaho sure has a lot of geology to study and learn about. Your field trips are super nice.

Opal loves to hide in pillow basalts too with the right conditions.

I am learning and learning-thank you!

Great understandable presentation. When in Yosemite as a child, I remember someone telling me that some water I saw seeping out of the granite walls was snow water filtered through the granite, and that this water was thousands of years old. Hmm, So, is that possible about granite being that permeable then? PS loved the porosity vs permeability demo. Really helps to understand it.

Awesome!! Now your helping me in my wheelhouse. In my home area and as a Contractor/Equipment Operator I have mechanically excavated and developed hundreds of springs for my agricultural based clients.. Never exacting. Always interesting.. I have also been to Thousand Springs there in Idaho..

I absolutely love your videos ❤

I would love for you to cover the geology of massacre rocks state park, I also would love to see projected maps of the lava flows by age. The youngest rock is like 2000 years old and the oldest is like a billion years old. It would be really neat to be able to look at individual flows and how they each would have affected the landscape. Excellent quality videos, I’ll be following your channel closely for more.

Thank you!💖

Thank you Shwan great video!

I wish I had known of this location the many times I was out there fishing. I fish the Big Lost quite a bit and was always amazed that the Lost, with so much volume, could just suddenly disappear into the ground...somewhere below MacKay near Arco as I recall. I was told it emerges into the Snake....maybe that exact location. Incredible.

Happy new year! Thank you for your videos!

Thanks!

Excellent presentation- thank you - I didn’t know this

i used visit the in laws and fished in some ponds near where you are. larger big trout turned loose in them. big time fun.

Thanks for this great video. I grew up just outside of Bliss, which is near Hagerman. Now in n Florida. Idaho has so many beautiful places. My favorites are the crystal clear lakes of the Sawtooth Mountains. I want to go to the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness some day.

Another SUPER educational video ..... Thanks Shawn ................... 925 Like ....................

Another good video..

Thank you

For the people asking about how the water tastes, it's great. If you drive north from Buhl, or south from Wendell, along the "Old Crystal Springs Grade Road" near the entrance to the golf course, there is a spring that was developed to fill water containers for the people living in the area. You can experience our great water straight from the rocks there. It's right next to the road. The park the video is in is very busy most days in the summer.

Back in 2001, I was on my way back from Glacier NP, and had to drive to Washington, Oregon and Nevada to complete driving in all 48 contiguous United States. (Hey, I had to do it, lol.) So my plan was to travel to Walla Walla (The Whitman Mission is there), then down I-84 and overnighted in Ontario. From there, I headed for a reserved hotel room in Twin Falls. I got off on the Thousand Springs Scenic Byway, since it fed right into Twin Falls, and some piece of tourist propaganda recommended it. Passed trough Hagerman, got to the springs area, only to find about a half-dozen springs flowing. (Not only was it a drought year, but Idaho was capturing almost *all* the water.) So ever since then, I've called the area the Dozen Springs. Then I get to Twin Falls, and find out because of the drought, they turned the falls off. THEY TURNED THE FALLS OFF!!! (I also took the drive down to Jackpot, Nevada, my last state, and got to cross something off my bucket list, lol.) All of that was on September 10, 2001. The next day, we pretty much had no choice but to continue the vacation. I was in Craters Of The Moon, on September 11, and there were only two other cars in the parking lot, probably tourists in the same boat as me. A surreal place on a surreal day. Anyway, around the INEEL (The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab), there was a sign saying "The Lost River" was someplace around there. It's a river that disappears into the ground and feeds the aquifer. It's about 130 miles from the Dozen Springs...

awesome

thank you

I noticed in your drawings that the basalt flows are in the hundreds of thousands of years ago, but the WA flood basalts were 17 Ma. Is there a reason for the the recent lava flows ID? They're not that far apart, it seems curious to me, especially with COTM being just 2000 years ago. When I was driving down the Snake River Coulee (or valley) at Twin Falls, I noticed waterfalls everywhere. I don't know if that has to do with the aquifer or not, but there's a lot of water. And that was in Sept when it was dry. Informative video. Thanks!

Interesting video. Thanks for your effort to bring us along. It looks like I need to spend some time driving around Idaho this spring/summer to see the subjects of your videos in person. You even provide the GPS coordinates! Thx.

Did you go west to get from the picnic tables to the springs and the pillow basalts? I was trying to follow along on google maps...it looks like the water at the beginning of the video is running right to left, sort of to the south before joining the Snake at a very sharp angle at the southern point of the island. The Snake then runs bottom to top of the map, and of course ends up joining the Columbia. What a lovely place! All that beautiful water springing out of the rocks! I need to visit.

That’s incredible 😅,. We have the Great Artesian Basin here in Australia but there aren’t any springs like that, as far as I know. The water takes thousands of years to travel through the basin that is below a giant area of the country.

The springs near me, where ground water has flowed through glacial till, often has a smell of rotten eggs, or sulfur. Some so bad few can drink it. I'm wondering what the mineral content of the water is flowing through the basalt?

❤🌠 Happy New Year

That's a decent flow rate!

Of note: both the big and little Lost Rivers add quite a lot of water to this subterranean system!

That sharp turn is called buhl idaho where hwy 30 turns north towards hagerman. Hagerman also grows some amazing watermelons called hagermelons.

I was camping along the little lost river, north of Howe, next to the gauging station, and had the total eclipse of 2017 pass over in totality.

Idea for a collab: The Idaho Quadcopter channel keeps flying around with high magnifiying drones in the Snake River Canyon. He flies along the cliffs. There’s a lot to see from his perspective, similar to the drones in iceland. I’m just a viewer of both channels, not connected.

Very nice explanation of the mechanisms being in place there, thanks. I do have one question concerning the pillow basalts though. Those in the video were round or oval shaped but there are also the hexagonal pillow basalts. Is the shape more due to the speed with which the lava is cooling down or is it more due to the composition of the basaltic material?

I rember when the waterfalls weren't blocked off, there was a pool of water that one of the waterfalls fell into, made a great swimming spot and well worth going through weeds and other plant growth to get... it's amazing how things can change

4 Jan 2023 3:34am The last time I saw thousand springs Idaho was about 58 years ago, and yes the water was still flowing quit nicely then as well. And there was a fish hatchery there as well then, in fact that's what I was doing there, “fishing” can’t remember to much about it, but I got a tremendous sun burn out of the hole thing. It was nice to get a run down on how all this water became exposed to the world in that canyon, I would assume that at one time before the river gorge was cut, the water was running right across and on to the other side, and with that much water stopping and being diverted into the river bed, and on down the river, and out to the sea, it must have dried up a good many springs or even a river on the other side, where do you think all that water was going before the gorge was cut? I wonder if any evidence of that could be found where spring had at one time been,-- and now nothing. My home town was Gooding but now I live in Ontario, Ore. There is an unusual butte, Malheur Butte just out of Ontario, clearly of volcanic origin, almost like it was the last belch or burp of the Yellowstone hotspot as Oregon and Idaho was passing by. Could you give a little information on this lonely little butte in Ore. Thanks

I'm picking out a path for highway 30 to see this myself. I wonder where this water builds up head? Certainly American Falls reservoir adds a term as well as those strange "disappearing rivers." I'm from the Black Swamp of Ohio. Rivers never disappear there.

You didn't mention the lost river in Mackey and Arco.

So, porosity is a measure of volume that water can occupy a soil. Permiabilty is a measure of speed with which a water volume occupies a soil.

Hey Shawn, if you go up Notch Butte on a cold winter day, you will see steam coming up out of a small hole in the rocks. It's right before you get to the top, on the north side of the road. What is the significance of this? I've always heard Notch is a long extinct volcano. But why is there heat venting out from it? I've been told there is another vent somewhere on the south east side but I have yet to find it

I like your series very much. They are very informative. A question regarding the permability of the springs: I would think that this water, when it immerges, is very pure. Can this water be used as drinking water, as from a well?

Shawn, it would be nice to know why the river takes such a sharp turn to the north by Hagerman.

Does the spring water generate electricity?

Is that the end of the ground water flow there at Hagerman or does it continue on further west?

It's not thousand springs anymore, its a couple springs. They have rerouted and capped off hundreds and hundreds of those springs. As a kid we'd play in those springs that ran the whole canyon wall. Now there are only a handful of those springs left.

150 to 200 years to travel through rock? Man, that has to be some fine tasting aged water. Mineral rich, no doubt. Have you tasted it and if so, how was it?

Can you elaborate on the Malad river ? Does it actually originate from Malad, and eventually empty northwest of Jerome into the snake river?

What your opinion? the farming / dairy near surrounding areas.. (jerome) all that poo poo soaking into the soil. does that 'leach' into all the nearby springs?

I live not far from these areas and hear about nitrogen from farmers fertilizer penetrating through the ground to the ground water that flows south to the Snake River which is causing algae plumes . My question is if takes 150 years for this water to come out to the river does this mean this problem is just starting?

I couldn't help but wonder how that area featured in the lives of Native Americans. I bet there are interesting stories there if you can find them. I don't think I have ever visited there despite having spent 4 years at Mtn Home AFB (1970-4) as a dependent and many more in Boise as a student of Biology and a year employed as a state Water Quality Specialist but in Pocatello.

Do those rivers@10:30 have gems ,silver,gold, agates and other mineralized gemstones

Can you imagine what the first white settlers ( I say White since the American Indians had already been here for thousands & thousands of years. ) thought when they came upon this area? It must have been incredible. I can hear it now from the settlers: ..." Okay, Ma, we got lots of water and good earth so this is where we stop and make our home, and I will become a successful potato farmer." I wonder if these springs have ever quit running or significantly slowed down ? Here in north Arkansas, we have Mammoth Springs that has an outflow of 9 million gallons per hour. It is called the 7th largest natural spring in the world. But unlike this place, Thousand Springs, Mammoth Springs is more or less just one huge underground spring, or river. The water that comes out is a constant 58 degrees F.

👍

Lost river outlet?

Beverage Stipend!

that sucks they put a little fence up i would fill my water bottles up before heading down to ritter island to fish the springs lol

The greens might be watecress

Can the water from these springs be drunk?

I'd pay extra to have bottled water from 1822.

Is that not cool or what? thank you ALL stay safe

first anyone has explained springs in understandable way

150-200 years and they try to shut the ground water users off claiming they are affecting surface users. What a joke. Ag is the most important resource on that aquifer. Not the fish.

Not a bad video but I think you forgot about the big and little lost Rivers one of the primary sources for the Snake River aquifer