Warm Springs, Nevada: The Hot Spring at the Crossroads of US 6 and the Extraterrestrial Highway

Fifty-odd miles east of Tonopah, on the long empty run of US Highway 6 toward Ely, a hot spring runs beside the road. This is Warm Springs, in Nye County, Nevada: a spring, a crossroads, and the ruins of a roadside station where, for generations, travelers stopped to water their horses, then their radiators, and finally themselves. It is also the place where State Route 375 — the “Extraterrestrial Highway” — begins its run southeast across the Nevada desert toward Rachel.

Warm Springs is the kind of place that leaves a thin paper trail, and we have tried to be honest about it. The dates, owners, and distances below come from a handful of reference works, state highway records, a 1947 newspaper notice, and travelers' accounts, and those sources do not always agree. Where they differ, we say so. The spring and its buildings sit on private land, so this is history told from the archive, not a travel suggestion.

The Spring

Everything here begins with the water. The settlement sits at an elevation of about 5,400 feet (the Geographic Names Information System lists 5,423) in the high desert near the pass that divides the Kawich Range from the Hot Creek Range. Rain is scarce — under five inches in a typical year — and the spring is the reason anyone built anything. One visitor's description of it on the Rachel, Nevada community site is hard to improve on: a natural hot spring that supports “an oasis of green in the otherwise very dry desert.”

By that account the source lies about a thousand feet from the highway, and the water emerges very hot, “almost boiling,” before running down a man-made channel to a small swimming pool with a bathhouse beside it. By the time it reaches the pool it has cooled to something a person can sit in. Other visitors describe the source itself as too hot to enter, white mineral crusts on the nearby slopes where the water has run for years, and desert bighorn sheep coming down to drink from the trenches that carry it. We found no published temperature measurement, and we could not confirm from any source that the pool is concrete-lined, though it is clearly a built pool rather than a natural pond.

Warm springs across the Great Basin tend to collect stories, and some collect darker ones; we have written elsewhere about the hermit of Pinto Hot Springs in the Black Rock Desert. Warm Springs in Nye County has a gentler history, built mostly of travelers, ranchers, and a few people who tried to make a living from a hot bath on a lonely road.

The Junction and Its Roads

Warm Springs is a true crossroads. US Highway 6 passes through it, running west to Tonopah and northeast toward Ely. State Route 375 begins here at its northern end and runs roughly 98 miles south and east, through Rachel, to a junction with State Route 318 at Crystal Springs. Nevada formally named SR 375 the “Extraterrestrial Highway” in 1996, with a dedication ceremony at Rachel that April, and it remains one of the state's least-traveled routes.

How far is Warm Springs from Tonopah? Accounts range from about 40 miles to about 60 miles, and most settle near 50. We would trust an odometer over any of them. The distance matters because of what lies on either side. US 6 between Tonopah and Ely is, in the words of its Wikipedia entry, the longest signed distance between gas stations in Nevada — about 168 miles with no services. One highway guide recalls that the only gas on that whole stretch used to be at Warm Springs, though it noted the pump had gone dry by the summer of 1998.

The road itself has a lineage. US 6 follows much of the old Midland Trail, an early coast-to-coast automobile road that Nevada carried as State Route 4. A Nevada SHPO historical marker in Ely records that the Midland Trail was designated Route 6 in 1937, connecting Ely to Tonopah and Southern California; highway historians date US 6's arrival in Nevada to 1938. The one-year gap is probably a matter of when the designation was announced versus when it was signed, though we have not confirmed that, and for our purposes it means that by the late 1930s a through-highway ran past the spring.

A note on Duckwater. Warm Springs is sometimes described as the place where the road to Duckwater leaves the highway. The state highway record says otherwise. Duckwater is reached by State Route 379, which begins at the small community of Currant on US 6 — roughly 52 miles southwest of Ely — and runs about 19.5 miles northwest across Railroad Valley to Duckwater. That junction lies well northeast of Warm Springs. We found no source describing a maintained road to Duckwater from Warm Springs itself, so we treat the Duckwater connection as a regional one: the same highway, the same empty country, but a different turnoff.

The Station and Its People

The usual date for the first settlement is 1866, when Warm Springs is said to have served as a stopover for stagecoaches and other travelers. One account describes a stone house beside a warm, spring-fed stream, built as a stage stop for travelers and freight wagons. We have not found a primary source for the 1866 date; it appears to travel from one reference work to the next. Other accounts muddy it further: one has the station on a route between Utah and central California and abandoned when the railroads arrived in the 1890s, while another calls it a stage stop on the road to Tonopah, a town that did not exist until 1900. They cannot all be describing the same traffic. What seems safe to say is that the spring was a known stopping place on the old wagon roads, and that stone cabins and a stone-walled corral survive from that era.

By the early 1900s, according to one account, the place had grown to include a boarding house and a store. A post office operated from January 19, 1924, until June 29, 1929, when mail service was moved to the old mining camp of Tybo. The 1940 census counted nine residents. In the 1930s, one source says, an operator named Wilson ran a large bar near the rock corrals, with perhaps five or six homes and the swimming pool.

The best-documented moment in the station's story is a sale. In August 1947 the Nevada State Journal reported “Fallini Bros. Buy Nye Springs,” and the Fallinis — the Nye County ranching family associated with the Twin Springs Ranch — became the owners. (One web summary spells the name “Fellini,” which appears to be a slip.) A man named Thomas Hurt, who had been running the springs, reportedly stayed on after the sale.

The later chapters are where the sources diverge. By the late 1970s the property included a trailer park, a bar and saloon, and a gas station, with the Warm Springs Bar and Cafe serving the highway. One account says developers tried in that decade to revive the place as a spa and rest stop for miners, an effort that did not last. Another says Tonopah's mining revival around 1979 brought new custom, and that travelers and miners in the early 1980s could buy a bath in the heated pool for a dollar, until the mining bust and disagreements among the operators closed the business. A third, a visitor who photographed the site, dates the two surviving buildings to the late 1950s or early 1960s and says they were abandoned around the 1990s. We cannot reconcile these into a single closing date, and we would rather say so than pick one.

What Remains Today

What is left is spare. Visitors describe two abandoned buildings, a boarded-up cafe, a stripped house, a pair of stone structures and a corral from the earlier era, a lone streetlight and a telephone box, and small huts built over the warm pools. The bar and cafe still hold a few period furnishings, including, by one report, a billiards table. The pool itself has been described as clear and algae-free, kept fresh by the constant flow of spring water, partly ringed by a chain-link fence.

Here we need to be plain. The spring, the pool, and the buildings are on private property. Several recent sources say the site is fenced, posted “Keep Out,” and closed to the public, and that the old welcome to soakers is long gone. Visitor accounts from earlier years sound more relaxed, so conditions may have changed. This is remote country, with no cell service and the nearest fuel dozens of miles away, and the roadside view from US 6 is all the history asks of us. If you drive through, stay on the pavement, carry water and a full tank, and leave the ruins as you found them. For another look at what a short-lived desert stop can leave behind, see our story of Jessup, Nevada.

At a Glance: Warm Springs, Nye County

• Warm Springs sits at the junction of US Highway 6 and State Route 375 in Nye County, at about 5,400 feet, roughly 50 miles east of Tonopah (published estimates run from 40 to 60).
• US 6 runs west to Tonopah and northeast to Ely, following much of the old Midland Trail; SR 375, the Extraterrestrial Highway, begins here and runs about 98 miles to Crystal Springs, past Rachel.
• The road to Duckwater is State Route 379, which leaves US 6 at Currant, northeast of Warm Springs, not at Warm Springs itself.
• A stage stop is dated to 1866 in several references; we found no primary source for that date.
• A post office operated from January 19, 1924, to June 29, 1929. The Fallini brothers bought the springs in August 1947.
• By the late 1970s the site had a trailer park, bar and saloon, gas station, and the Warm Springs Bar and Cafe; sources disagree on when it closed.
• The spring, pool, and ruins are private property and posted against entry.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Warm Springs, Nevada?

In Nye County, at the junction of US Highway 6 and State Route 375 (the Extraterrestrial Highway), roughly 50 miles east of Tonopah. Published distances vary between about 40 and 60 miles.

Is the road to Duckwater at Warm Springs?

No. Duckwater is reached by State Route 379, which begins at Currant on US 6, about 52 miles southwest of Ely, and runs roughly 19.5 miles to Duckwater. Currant is northeast of Warm Springs.

Can you swim in the Warm Springs pool?

Not as a rule. The spring and pool are on private property, and recent accounts describe them as fenced and posted against entry. Older travel accounts describe a more open attitude, but we would not assume it today.

When did the station and cafe close?

Sources disagree. The cafe is dated to the 1970s by some accounts, the early 1980s mining boom by others, and the buildings are said to have been abandoned around the 1990s by a visitor who photographed them. We have not found a single authoritative closing date.

Conclusion

Warm Springs is a small story at the junction of two long roads. A hot spring drew stagecoaches, then automobiles and miners, and a succession of owners made a living from a pool, a cafe, and a gas pump in a place where the next one was a long way off. Now the highway traffic mostly passes by, the spring still runs, and the buildings wait out the weather. We would sooner give you an honest account with its gaps showing than a tidier one that claimed more certainty than the record allows.

We are always talking about Nevada's back-country history at The Eclection. To bring a piece of the old road home, explore our curated collection at The Eclection.

Resources & Further Reading

For deeper study, these are reliable, non-commercial starting points:

• Online Nevada Encyclopedia — articles on Nevada history, people, and places.
• Nevada Historical Society — the state museum and research library for Nevada history.
• Nevada SHPO: “Ely – Forging the Link” historical marker — on the Midland Trail and US 6.
• Bureau of Land Management, Tonopah Field Office — public lands in central Nevada.

Hero photograph: ruins along U.S. Route 6 at Warm Springs, Nevada, by Famartin, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.