The region’s most famous free hot spring is currently illegal to enter. Forest Service Order 05-12-52-25-02, signed July 2, 2025, closes Deep Creek Hot Springs and the adjacent Aztec Falls area through June 7, 2027, citing repeated drowning deaths and near-daily search-and-rescue calls in the canyon. Soaking in hot springs in Southern California through 2026 is a booking decision, not a hiking one.
Price is the first filter. Day passes run from $15 at Desert Hot Springs Spa Hotel to $105 on a Monday and $115 to $125 on a weekend at Glen Ivy, per July 2026 rates. Murrieta Hot Springs charges $109 weekdays and $129 weekends. Same category of experience, an eightfold spread in price.
Three places are of particular note in the region, and they fail for opposite reasons. Glen Ivy in Corona is a day resort with no lodging and a strict 18-and-over rule. Murrieta reopened in February 2024 with 174 rooms and more than 25 pools, and it takes families. Desert Hot Springs is not a property at all but a whole town of small mineral-spring hotels north of Palm Springs.
The order below runs by trip shape, so read it to self-select rather than as a ranking. One piece of geology explains why the desert end of the list is different: Desert Hot Springs sits above a rare split where a hot mineral aquifer and a cold drinking-water aquifer surface side by side, divided by the Mission Creek Branch of the San Andreas Fault. Start where most people start.
1. Glen Ivy Hot Springs: The Mud Bath Is Included, the Check-In Line Is the Problem
Guests describe check-in as “extremely slow and unorganized,” with waits of “90 mins or more” reported after booking and paying in advance. That is the first thing to know about the region’s best-known soaking property, and the last thing its marketing mentions.
Full-day admission in July 2026 is $105 Monday through Thursday and $115 to $125 Friday through Sunday. August drops to $95 weekdays, $105 Friday and Sunday, $125 Saturday. Evening admission, Wednesday through Sunday 4pm to 9pm, is $60; a Deal of the Day rate starts at $65 daytime and $45 evenings. The Passport to Wellness package runs $385 to $435 with a 50-minute massage or facial, the Grotto, a cabana and a meal.
Club Mud is included in standard admission at no extra charge. The Grotto is a separate $45 add-on. The clay is the detail worth the drive: California red clay from a mine three miles away, mixed fresh daily with mineral water, never recycled, in an attraction the spa dates to 1984, its current structure to 2002, on a site with a century-old mud-bathing tradition.
Glen Ivy admits guests aged 18 and over only and checks physical photo ID at the gate. Reservations are mandatory, walk-ins refused, credit card required to hold the booking.
The 85-acre Corona property is run by GOCO Hospitality, which markets it as the United States’ oldest and highest-grossing hot spring resort and says it was founded in 1860. Neither claim is independently verified. The 3,452 Yelp reviews logged as of July 2026 are.
Summer weekends fill every pool, sauna and mud bath, loungers get towel-reserved, the lunch line runs 45 minutes, and parking degrades after the 9:30am open.
Best for: a first-time day trip from LA or Orange County, booked Monday, arriving at open, with the mud bath as the point.
Skip if: you have kids, you decided this morning, or you cannot be there by 9:30am.
2. Murrieta Hot Springs Resort: 25 Pools, and a Resort Still Two Years Into Its Reopening
One of California’s oldest resorts is the one most Southern Californians have never visited. German immigrant Fritz Guenther built it in 1902. Calvary Chapel Bible College held the grounds from 1995 to 2022, closing it to the public for nearly 30 years.
Texas-based Olympus Real Estate Group bought the 46-acre property in October 2022 for roughly $50 million and reopened it February 1, 2024 with 174 rooms and more than 25 pools among 50-plus water features. The stated range is 50F to 104F-plus, checked and posted every two hours. Our hydrotherapy circuit guide covers how to work a spread that wide.
Standard day passes are $109 Monday through Friday and $129 Saturday, Sunday and holidays per the resort’s FAQ. The locals rate starts at $59 with government ID. A Twilight Pass from 4pm is $59 weekdays and $79 weekends. The adults-only Relaxation Terrace pass runs $139 and $179, up from $129 and $159 earlier.
Children of all ages are welcome, 2 and under free, with family pools beside the separately priced adult zone. Glen Ivy and Two Bunch Palms refuse minors outright, so this is the only anchor that solves a family trip.
Then the gap. One reviewer reported that “100% of the mineral pools were lukewarm and none were at 104 degrees,” which undercuts the entire proposition. Another logged a recurring 30-minute check-in line from an understaffed front desk.
A review titled “Great room but lack luster resort” calls the converted-apartment rooms “clean but really bare bones.” Dining is limited and poolside service reportedly carries only alcohol. Google sits at 4.4.
Best for: a family weekend where one adult wants a kid-free hour, and locals who qualify for the resident rate.
Skip if: you are paying full weekend rate expecting finished-luxury service, or a reliable 104F soak is what you are buying.
3. Desert Hot Springs: A Whole Town Built on Sulfur-Free Mineral Water
This town sits on a fault line where two aquifers surface next to each other, one hot and one cold. The cold one holds a credential no other water agency on earth holds.
The split runs along the Mission Creek Branch of the San Andreas Fault. East of it the hot aquifer emerges at up to 180F, sulfur-free and odorless, which Visit Greater Palm Springs calls a rarity among natural hot springs, carrying calcium, magnesium, potassium, silica and lithium. The source is snowmelt off Mount San Gorgonio that takes roughly seven years to filter down before geothermal heat reaches it.
Mission Springs Water District is the only agency in the world to have taken gold, silver and bronze at the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting, a competition drawing roughly 100 entrants from five continents. Gold came in 2020, 2004 and 1999, bronze most recently in 2025. On a page where nearly every water claim traces back to the operator making it, that record comes from a third party.
Sulfur-free matters practically: no rotten-egg smell following you into the car, your hair or your swimsuit for the rest of the day.
Homesteader Cabot Yerxa struck 110F-plus water on one side of what became Miracle Hill in 1913 and cold drinking water on the other. Cahuilla travelers had used the area long before that.
Inventory is thinning. Four historic mineral-spring properties are permanently closed as of 2026: Agua Caliente Hotel & Mineral Water Spa, Sahara Resort & Spa, Hacienda Hot Springs Inn & Spa, and Swiss Health Resort.
The verdict: the water is the best on this page and the only supply with an outside credential behind it. The properties sitting on top of it are wildly uneven, which is what items 4 and 5 sort out.
4. Two Bunch Palms: Adults Only, 70 Rooms, and a Fee Stack Worth Reading First
The rate you are quoted is not the rate you pay. A 4.6% wellness fee and a 15.195% city bed tax land on the room rate, a $200 per night incidentals hold applies, and any guest beyond two in a room costs $85 per night plus tax. Roughly 20% arrives on top of the headline number before anyone orders a drink.
Cancellation terms are tight. Standard rooms need 72 hours’ notice by noon PST to avoid a first-night charge, suites need seven days, and non-refundable rates cannot be modified at all.
The property is strictly adults-only at 18 and over, day visits included. Seventy rooms across 77 acres is the actual argument for booking it: a fraction of the density of the big day resorts. The Grotto draws from the historic Miracle Hill spring and replenishes on a 24-hour cycle. The resort says it has been active on the site for over 600 years, a claim repeated widely in travel press and verified nowhere.
Day-pass pricing and the Grotto’s current temperature could not be retrieved from the resort’s own site during research, because the booking widget blocks it. A day visit therefore starts with a phone call, because the number is not published. Competing guides imply a day rate exists. We could not find one.
Adults-only does not mean couples-only: the 18-plus rule applies to every guest, so a friends trip or a bachelorette works fine.
Best for: a couple or small adult group who want quiet and can live with the cancellation window.
Skip if: you are price-comparing against day passes, traveling with anyone under 18, or need flexible dates.
5. The Desert Hot Springs Day Pass Ladder: $15 to $79, and What Changes at Each Rung
You can soak in the same aquifer for $15 that costs $105 ninety minutes up the freeway. Seven properties, one water table.
- Desert Hot Springs Spa Hotel, $15 ($10 senior, $5 Tuesdays, $20 holidays), waived with any spa service. Eight mineral pools at a 50-room 1960s courtyard property, 9am to 8pm on a pass. Reviews call it “very badly run down.”
- Miracle Springs Resort & Spa, $20 for 9am to 6pm, $18 with a treatment. Buyers must be 21.
- The Spring Resort & Spa, $50, waived with a $100-plus treatment. Adults-only. Three outdoor mineral pools held at a consistent 104F plus a Finnish sauna, the answer to Murrieta’s lukewarm-pool problem.
- El Morocco Inn & Day Spa, $70 for 9am to 4pm, waived with any treatment of an hour. Mineral pool, Jacuzzi and two far-infrared dry saunas, on the ladder’s narrowest window. Infrared and Finnish saunas are not interchangeable: our sauna guide explains the difference.
- Miracle Manor Boutique Hotel & Spa, $74 Deluxe Day Pass for mineral pools and soaking tubs; a spa variant adds a 60-minute treatment and $10 food credit.
- Azure Palm Hot Springs, $79 Oasis Day Pass with locker, robe and slippers, $39 for Coachella Valley residents. Wells emerge at 174F, the hottest in the region per the operator.
- Mi Kasa Hot Springs, adults-only and clothing-optional, 9am to 10pm, with cold plunge, cabana and towels. Pricing is not published anywhere we could find.
At The Spring, El Morocco and Miracle Springs the entry fee is waived or discounted against a treatment. A $100 treatment at The Spring absorbs the $50 pass, so the treatment nets out at $50. Residency is the second lever: Azure Palm charges locals $39.
Quick comparison: under $25 buys water and nothing else. $50 to $79 buys reliable temperature, a robe and a locker. A treatment at the $50 to $70 rungs erases the entry fee, the cheapest upgrade here.
6. Glen Ivy vs Murrieta vs Desert Hot Springs: How to Pick the Right One
Pick wrong and it is not a minor regret. Glen Ivy checks photo ID at the gate and turns away anyone under 18, so a family that drives out has lost the day before they park.
Anyone under 18? Glen Ivy and Two Bunch Palms are both 18-plus with no exceptions. Miracle Springs requires 21-plus just to buy a day pass. Murrieta welcomes all ages, 2 and under free. That question eliminates most of this page.
Day trip or overnight? Glen Ivy has no lodging, so it is a day trip by definition. Murrieta has 174 rooms, Two Bunch Palms 70, and Desert Hot Springs is where cheap overnight-plus-soak combinations live.
How far ahead are you deciding? Glen Ivy refuses walk-ins and needs a credit card. Murrieta and most Desert Hot Springs properties are more forgiving. If the plan formed this morning, Glen Ivy is out.
Budget per person for the soak? Glen Ivy $105 to $125. Murrieta $109 to $129, or $59 as a local or after 4pm. Desert Hot Springs $15 to $79.
Drive time? Corona is closest to LA and Orange County, which is why Glen Ivy works as a self-contained day and Desert Hot Springs does not.
What is the actual draw? Glen Ivy’s included Club Mud is the definitive red clay bath (Murrieta’s day pass adds a lighter clay station, not the full immersion). Murrieta the only one with pool volume and rooms together. Desert Hot Springs the only one with sulfur-free water and a third-party credential.
Direct recommendation: book Glen Ivy for a childless weekday trip where the mud bath is why you came. Book Murrieta, midweek, when there are kids or when you want the soak and the bed together. Choose Desert Hot Springs when water and price matter more than polish, then pick your rung from item 5.
7. What Is Actually in the Water at Each of These Springs
Glen Ivy’s signature experience is not its water at all. It is clay, trucked in from a mine about three miles away.
The water itself is sulfurous: KCAL’s on-site segment called the smell pungent. Glen Ivy’s public materials say considerably more about the clay than about the mineral profile of the water, which tells you what it sells.
Murrieta states its geothermal water carries calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, bicarbonates, chloride, fluoride and boron, drawn from hundreds of feet down. The resort describes most pools as 100% natural geothermal spring water across the 50F to 104F-plus range, with temperatures checked and posted every two hours. That posting cadence is the operationally useful part: it is the only mechanism on this page that lets you verify a pool’s temperature before you get in.
Desert Hot Springs is the outlier. Sulfur-free and odorless, carrying calcium, magnesium, potassium, silica and lithium, emerging up to 180F east of the fault. Azure Palm’s wells come up at 174F, the region’s hottest per the operator, which also reports chlorine undetectable by the time water reaches guests.
No published third-party laboratory analysis giving mineral concentrations in mg/L was found for Glen Ivy’s or Murrieta’s specific pools. Every mineral list above comes from the operator. Mineral lists are therefore not a comparison tool here. Compare on what is verifiable: temperature, posting practice, chlorination policy, and smell.
The verdict: on water alone Desert Hot Springs wins, and it holds the only claim here with a third party behind it. Murrieta wins on your ability to check a temperature before committing. Glen Ivy is a clay story rather than a water story, and clay behaves differently from mineral water on skin.
8. Deep Creek, Gaviota and Montecito: The Wild Springs, and Why One Is Closed Until 2027
Southern California’s most famous free hot spring has been under a federal closure order since July 2025 and stays closed until June 2027. Most pages telling you how to hike in have not noticed.
Forest Service Order 05-12-52-25-02, signed July 2, 2025, covers Deep Creek Hot Springs in the San Bernardino National Forest and the adjacent Aztec Falls area, running through June 7, 2027. The stated reasons are repeated drowning deaths at Aztec Falls and near-daily search-and-rescue calls in the canyon. The traditional $10 cash fee at Bowen Ranch buys parking, not legal entry, while the order stands. Rangers have historically not pursued nudity citations there, but the clothing-optional tradition never had official sanction.
Gaviota is the one genuinely open. It sits inside Gaviota State Park near Santa Barbara, open for day use 7am to sunset, free to enter, with $2 trailhead parking and a hike in on the Gaviota Peak trail.
Montecito needs a caveat. It lies within Los Padres National Forest, is publicly accessible, and carries no listed entry fee, but its 2026 access-restriction status could not be confirmed. Check current Los Padres conditions before driving out.
These are not cheap versions of items 1 to 6. No day pass, no towel, no locker, no posted temperature, no lifeguard, and you carry out what you carry in. Gaviota closes at sunset while Desert Hot Springs Spa Hotel keeps eight pools open to 8pm on a $15 pass.
Clothing-optional norms and shared-water etiquette are their own subject, covered in our communal bathing guide.
The verdict: Deep Creek is off the table until at least June 2027, and any guide routing you through Bowen Ranch is out of date. Gaviota is a hike with a soak at the end, not a spa day.
9. Planning a Southern California Soak: Season, Day Pass Mechanics, and What to Bring
The evening pass is the cheapest fix for the two biggest complaints on this page, and it costs roughly half at both anchors.
Glen Ivy’s evening admission, Wednesday through Sunday 4pm to 9pm, is $60 against $105 to $125 for a full day. Murrieta’s Twilight Pass, from 4pm, is $59 weekdays and $79 weekends against $109 and $129. Fewer people, cooler air, half the price. You trade hours, which matters less than it sounds when the first two go to queuing and parking.
January to April and October to November are the most comfortable, lowest-humidity windows. June through September routinely hits 100F-plus, with July often above 104F. Desert Hot Springs sits higher than Palm Springs and runs cooler after sunset, which makes a summer evening soak workable when an afternoon one is not.
Glen Ivy takes no walk-ins and checks photo ID at the gate. Murrieta’s pools clear at 9:30pm, lockers run $13 to $15, robes $19.99, and outside food and drink are banned. Several Desert Hot Springs properties waive the entry fee against a treatment, and most publish a local-resident rate. Choose that treatment by outcome rather than by name, which our massage type guide sorts out.
Bring photo ID, slip-on sandals for wet decks, a dry second swimsuit for the drive home, and $2 for Gaviota trailhead parking. No glass near a pool deck. Shower before you get in, keep the volume down, soak in 15-minute increments rather than an hour straight in 104F water, and drink deliberately, because heat plus treatments dehydrate fast.
Direct recommendation: book a weekday evening pass between October and April. If you go for a full day, arrive at open. At any Desert Hot Springs property, book the treatment first and let it absorb the entry fee.
Southern California Hot Springs: Frequently Asked Questions
No. Deep Creek is under an active Forest Service closure order, 05-12-52-25-02, in effect through June 7, 2027, covering the springs and the adjacent Aztec Falls area. The order cites repeated drowning deaths and frequent search-and-rescue calls. Paying the Bowen Ranch trailhead fee does not make entry legal, so treat any guide routing you that way as out of date. Gaviota Hot Springs is the open alternative.
No. Glen Ivy admits guests aged 18 and over only, and physical photo ID is checked at entry. There is no family section and no exception for day visits. For a Southern California hot springs trip with children, Murrieta Hot Springs Resort is the option, with designated family pools and children aged 2 and under free. Miracle Springs is stricter still, requiring guests to be 21 to buy a day pass.
Yes. Standard day passes run $109 Monday to Friday and $129 on weekends and holidays per the resort’s own FAQ. Local residents with government ID start at $59. A Twilight Pass from 4pm is $59 weekdays and $79 weekends, and the adults-only Relaxation Terrace pass is priced separately at $139 and $179.
Desert Hot Springs is a separate, smaller city just north of Palm Springs. It sits above a rare split where hot mineral and cold drinking-water aquifers surface side by side, and it is where the region’s small mineral-spring spa hotels are concentrated. The hot side is sulfur-free and odorless. Palm Springs proper is known for resort pools, golf and mid-century architecture rather than natural mineral water access.
January to April and October to November, when temperatures are most comfortable and humidity is lowest. Summer, June through September, routinely exceeds 100F, with July often above 104F, which makes daytime desert soaking uncomfortable. Summer still works if you book an evening pass: Glen Ivy charges $60 after 4pm against $105 to $125 for a full day. Desert Hot Springs also runs cooler after sunset.
Yes, it appears to remain open as of 2026, which is notable given that four nearby historic properties have closed permanently: Agua Caliente Hotel & Mineral Water Spa, Sahara Resort & Spa, Hacienda Hot Springs Inn & Spa and Swiss Health Resort. Its eight mineral pools run 24 hours for overnight guests, the day pass is $15 and runs 9am to 8pm, and the fee is waived with any spa service. Reviews consistently flag run-down upkeep, so treat it as a budget soak.
