Hooper Spring
Hooper Ave
Soda Springs, ID
Cup your hands under the pavilion and drink water that bubbles up naturally fizzy, the same sparkling spring that stopped Oregon Trail wagons in their tracks.
Hooper Spring is one of the small, genuine wonders of the Oregon Trail. In a quiet city park at the edge of Soda Springs, water bubbles up out of the ground already sparkling, naturally carbonated by carbon dioxide rising through the rock. A stone pavilion shelters the spring, and you are meant to do the obvious thing: cup your hands and drink.
The emigrants who came this way in the 1840s could hardly believe it. They called it Beer Spring, joking that the fizzy water tasted like flat beer, and many stopped to fill cups, add sugar or flavoring, and make themselves the first soda pop most of them had ever tasted. That the same spring still runs, and still fizzes, is what makes it worth pulling off the highway.
What Guests Love
- Actually drinking the naturally sparkling water, cold and fizzy straight from the ground
- Standing where Oregon Trail pioneers marveled at Beer Spring nearly two centuries ago
- A simple, free, always-open city park that makes a perfect road-trip curiosity stop
- Pairing it with the nearby captive geyser that erupts on a timer in town
Worth Knowing
- The water is naturally carbonated and mineral-rich; it is a novelty to sample, and most people find it an acquired taste
- This is a modest neighborhood park, not a grand attraction; the wonder is in the water itself, not the setting
- It stays open year-round, though the pavilion and grounds are most pleasant in the warmer months
- Soda Springs has several other carbonated-water sites and a scheduled geyser worth combining into one stop
Details
Soda Springs, ID
Learn about Hooper Spring
Why the water fizzes
The carbonation is a gift of the region's volcanic past. Beneath southeast Idaho, geothermal heat and old volcanic activity release carbon dioxide gas that rises through the ground and dissolves into the cold groundwater. When that water reaches the surface at Hooper Spring, the gas comes out of solution, and the spring bubbles and sparkles like a soda fountain.
The whole area around Soda Springs is dotted with these carbonated seeps and mineral springs, which is how the town got its name. The water is also heavy with dissolved minerals, giving it a distinctive tang that people either love or make a face at, usually both at once.
Beer Spring on the Oregon Trail
For westbound emigrants, this stretch was known as the Oregon Trail Oasis, a welcome band of springs and green after hard, dry miles. The naturally fizzy water was the headline attraction, and pioneer diaries are full of delighted descriptions of Beer Spring and the game of doctoring the water into a treat.
The spring later took the name Hooper, after W.H. Hooper, a prominent Salt Lake City banker and Utah's delegate to Congress, who summered in the area and helped promote the town's mineral waters in the 1880s. The park you visit today preserves that pioneer novelty as a small piece of living trail history.
The wider soda country
Soda Springs makes a genuinely quirky stop. Beyond Hooper Spring, the town is home to a captive geyser, a carbonated spring that was capped after it was accidentally drilled into, and now erupts on a controlled schedule, sending a plume of cold, fizzy water into the air.
The surrounding country is high and volcanic, rolling farmland giving way to the lava flows and forested ranges of the Caribou-Targhee. It is quiet, uncrowded backcountry Idaho, the kind of place road-trippers stumble into and remember.
When to go
The spring runs year-round, and the little park stays open through the seasons, but the warmer months from late spring through early fall are the most pleasant for lingering under the pavilion and wandering the grounds.
Southeast Idaho sits high, so winters here are genuinely cold and the country around Soda Springs can be snowbound. If you want to combine Hooper Spring with the town's geyser and the nearby springs and caves, a summer or early-fall afternoon is the easy, comfortable window.
Closest Boutels
The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.
Things to Do Near Soda Springs
Soda Springs Geyser
In town
A capped carbonated spring that erupts on a timed schedule, a cold fizzy geyser in the middle of town, one of the few of its kind.
Formation Springs and Cave
About 3 miles northeast
A preserve of clear travertine spring pools and a cave, a peaceful nature walk on the edge of the volcanic country.
Bear Lake
About 40 miles south
The turquoise 'Caribbean of the Rockies' straddling the Idaho-Utah line, famous for its color and its beaches.