Soda Springs

Long before the wagons came, this corner of the Bear River country was homeland to the Shoshone and Bannock people, whose descendants today are enrolled in the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes at Fort Hall. The naturally carbonated springs were a known gathering and resting place, a spot of good water in high, dry country.

When the Oregon and California Trail traffic swelled in the 1840s and 1850s, emigrants treated the springs as one of the marvels of the whole overland route. They called the effervescent pools Beer Springs, marveled at water that fizzed like something from a bottle, and lingered to bathe, wash, and refill their casks. You can still walk to Hooper Spring, sit at a covered spring house, and taste the same tangy, gas-charged water the pioneers drank, and short traces of wagon ruts and trailside graves survive in the sage nearby.

The geyser was never supposed to exist. In 1937, a crew drilling for a hot water source hit a chamber of pressurized, carbon-dioxide-charged water a few hundred feet down, and the well erupted skyward on its own. Unable to cap the pressure permanently, the town turned the accident into an attraction: the well is sealed with a valve and set on a timer, so the geyser is released on a regular schedule through the day and shut off in between.

It is worth knowing what you are watching. This is not a hot thermal geyser like the ones at Yellowstone. The water is cold, and the force that drives it is dissolved carbon dioxide coming out of solution under pressure, the same gas that makes the springs fizz, blasting a plume of spray high into the air for a few minutes before the valve closes again.

Southeast Idaho sits over a restless piece of the earth, laced with old volcanic rock and deep faults. Far below the surface, carbon dioxide gas rises along those fractures and dissolves into cold groundwater held under pressure. When that charged water finally reaches the surface at a spring, or up a drilled well, the pressure drops and the gas rushes out of solution, so the water bubbles, hisses, and tastes of minerals and soda.

That is why the area holds so many different springs so close together, each with its own character, from gently bubbling soda pools to the tall jet of the captive geyser. It is one of the best places in the country to see, and taste, cold carbonated water coming straight out of the ground.

Soda Springs is ranch and rail country, a small town ringed by sagebrush hills, hayfields, and the wide Bear River valley. It sits at a breezy elevation where winters run long and snowy and summers stay pleasantly cool, so the sweet season for a visit is roughly late spring through early fall.

The surrounding Caribou County high country is quiet and uncrowded, good for a scenic drive, a wildlife-watching stop, or a base between the hot pools of Lava Hot Springs to the west and the turquoise water of Bear Lake to the south. It is the kind of overlooked Idaho stop that rewards travelers who slow down and read the strange, fizzing water for what it is.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.