Tecopa hot springs. Every place to soak.

• Tecopa Hot Springs & Campground: the county springs. Day passes sold. Two bathhouses with separate men’s and women’s mineral pools. No swimsuits.
• Delight’s Hot Springs Resort: day and night passes. A big outdoor hot-springs pool and four private bathhouses.
• Tecopa Hot Springs Resort: overnight guests only. Five private tub rooms. Open October through May.
• Shoshone Inn, Shoshone: inn guests. A naturally warm mineral-spring swimming pool about 10 miles north.

These are the public springs. Inyo County owns them, and Flippin-Hamrick runs them under a 10-year agreement. There are two bathhouses with separate, enclosed men’s and women’s hot mineral pools, plus a small separate pool.

A day pass buys unlimited soaks for the day. Campers get the springs with their stay. There are monthly passes for long stays and a $35 annual pass for Tecopa locals.

Bathing is nude, under Inyo County code. No swimsuits or clothing of any kind in the baths.

The water

The springs flow on their own, with no pumps, at about 102°F at the source. Carbon-14 dating puts the water’s apparent age at about 28,000 years. It rises along the Furnace Creek fault zone.

Camping

Thirty partial-hookup RV sites and more than 200 dry camping sites, with restrooms and showers, for a night or a whole winter.

Delight’s has a big outdoor hot-springs swimming pool and four private bathhouses, all filled with the springs’ mineral water. It sells day passes, and night passes after 4 PM, so you do not have to stay over to soak.

It is on Tecopa Hot Springs Road with the other springs.

Five private tub rooms, each with a latching door and a skylight, big enough for two or three people. Each tub holds about 350 gallons at about 104°F and refills itself in about an hour.

The tubs are for overnight guests only; there are no day passes. Stay in a motel room, a cabin or a full-hookup RV site. Guests can soak about 21 hours a day; the tubs close each afternoon for cleaning. The resort is open October through May.

A little history

The Southern Paiute likely used these springs for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Tecopa is named for Chief Tecopa, who lived here until he died in 1904. Miners bathed and did their laundry in the natural pool in the late 1800s. Around 1920 the pool was enlarged with dynamite, and the bathhouses, motels and campgrounds followed.

Shoshone is about 10 miles north on Highway 127. The Shoshone Inn has a naturally warm mineral-spring swimming pool for its guests,, and the Crowbar Café & Saloon serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Shoshone also has gas.

Two places sell a day pass: Tecopa Hot Springs & Campground and Delight’s Hot Springs Resort. Tecopa Hot Springs Resort and the Shoshone Inn pool are for overnight guests.

Coming out from Pahrump or Las Vegas for the day? That is your soak. Then head to downtown Tecopa for Death Valley Brewing, open Thursday through Sunday afternoons.

Soaking season is October through May. That is when Tecopa Hot Springs Resort is open and the desert days are mild.

In this corner of the Mojave, summer highs run 100 to 120°F. Winter highs reach the 70s, and nights can drop below freezing, which is the best time to be in a hot tub.

Tecopa Hot Springs Road leaves State Highway 127 seven miles south of Shoshone. The springs are three miles down it.

From Las Vegas it is about 80 miles, a little under two hours. From Pahrump, take the Old Spanish Trail Highway southwest into California and on to Tecopa. Death Valley’s southeast entrance is about 10 miles from the springs.

Fill the tank in Pahrump. There is gas in Shoshone, at Shoshone prices.

While you are here, see things to do in Tecopa: China Ranch date shakes, Amargosa Canyon and pizza and beer downtown.