For road-trippers traveling Route 66, you’ll find more places to refuel besides service stations. Along the 2,448-mile highway, between neon-lit motels and musical museums, nature offers its own rejuvenation.
Long seen as a cross-country link between big cities (and connecting a string of salt-of-the-earth towns along the way), Route 66 also winds through the vast wilds of the American West. Out here, the road passes a surprising amount of thermal terrain, where natural hot springs bubble up among creeks and canyons, providing a restorative place to soak.
While most aren’t directly on the highway, quick detours lead to spring-fed solace. From a historic hotel to geothermal pools in the high desert, here are the best hot springs within an hour’s drive of Route 66.
The Original Springs Hotel — Okawville, Illinois
- Distance from Route 66: 43 miles southeast of St. Louis, about 45 minutes
Containing the only remaining mineral spring in Illinois, the Original Springs Hotel has been rejuvenating travelers in the downstate town of Okawville since 1867. Shortly after mineral springs were discovered here, sample testing revealed that the waters had similar medicinal properties to those in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The hotel popped up to capitalize on the new tourism stream, which attracted travelers from throughout the Midwest to soak in its healing spa. Today, the Original Springs Hotel still operates a mineral spring spa with thermal baths, massages, facials, and other services, for guests and nonguests alike. The hotel is currently closed for renovations, but has plans to reopen in late summer of 2026.
Jemez Hot Springs, Jemez Springs, New Mexico
- Distance from Route 66: 59 miles north of Albuquerque, about 60 minutes
Jemez Springs sits within Jemez National Recreation Area in New Mexico.
Photo by Logan Fisher/Unsplash (L); photo by Stephanie Klepacki/Unsplash (R)
For centuries, the Anasazi and Towa peoples frequented the mineral springs in the canyons between the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico. By the mid-1800s, white settlers discovered the mineralized waters, sitting underground beneath the Valles Caldera National Preserve. They built a wooden bathhouse on the banks of the Jemez River, advertising “Hot Sulphur Spring Water Baths.” Stagecoaches transported guests from Albuquerque to bask in the balmy waters, rich in calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, and other healing minerals. Nowadays, the trip is a lot quicker. An hour’s drive north of Albuquerque, along the Jemez Mountain Trail National Scenic Byway (Highway 4), the Jemez Hot Springs features four mineral pools with built-in seating and temperatures between 98-105 degrees Fahrenheit. Passes are available for one or two hours, starting at $25 per person.
Montezuma Hot Springs, Montezuma, New Mexico
- Distance from Route 66: 71 miles north of Santa Rosa, about 60 minutes
The Queen Anne–style Montezuma Castle emerged as a hotel—built by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway—just in time to cash in on increased hot springs tourism in the 1920s and ’30s as roads became paved. The Montezuma Hot Springs, once owned by the hotel, are now free and open to the public, on private property owned by the United World College. A short stroll off lesser-known Route 65, six miles northwest of Las Vegas, New Mexico, the springs consist of three soaking areas, each outfitted with cement-lined tubs and temperatures between 95–120 degrees Fahrenheit. From the banks of Gallinis Creek, travelers can glimpse the shuttered hotel in the distance.
Ojo Santa Fe Spa Resort, Santa Fe, New Mexico
- Distance from Route 66: Four miles from exit 276 near Santa Fe, about 10 minutes
Ojo Santa Fe is the closest hot springs to Route 66.
Courtesy of Ojo Spa Resorts
Of the boutique springs experiences in New Mexico, Ojo Santa Fe Spa Resort is the only one located right off the original Route 66. In the high desert, where Native Americans and settlers sought spring-fed serenity for centuries, modern road-trippers will find a new form of tranquility. The upscale resort is set on 77 tree-shaded acres, offering private pools with piñon-stocked fireplaces and communal pools flanked by hammocks, along with a saltwater pool, float tank, sauna, restaurant, and adobe casitas for overnight guests. Day passes start at $45 per person.
Kaiser Hot Springs, Wikieup, Arizona
- Distance from Route 66: 66 miles south of Kingman, about 60 minutes
After a one-hour drive south of Route 66, a trailhead begins along a dirt road marked “Kaiser Spring Wash.” Park your car here and head out on a 1.5-mile hike (3 miles round trip) to Warm Springs Canyon, where Kaiser Hot Springs bubbles up along Burro Creek. Free to visit, it consists of a gravel-bottomed rock pool—clocking in around 100 degrees Fahrenheit—on undeveloped land. The rusticity of the pool ensures more privacy. Camping is allowed for free, and due to its natural location on public land, it’s clothing optional.
Deep Creek Hot Springs, Apple Valley, California
- Distance from Route 66: 20 miles south of Victorville, about 35 minutes
The desert oasis of Deep Creek Hot Springs is only half an hour from Route 66.
Photo by Tom Ha/Shutterstock
Along the Pacific Crest Trail in San Bernardino National Forest, about an hour’s drive from Route 66 in Victorville, Deep Creek Hot Springs is the kind of definitive oasis travelers might envision when they imagine thermal water in the Mojave Desert. Accessible via a roughly four-mile round-trip hike from Bowen Ranch, which is marked as strenuous and steep, travelers are rewarded for their efforts with a series of six or seven natural pools (depending on the flow from the Mojave River) within a rocky canyon along Deep Creek. Three soaking areas range in temperature and depth, including one that reaches six feet deep and 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Being remote, the dress code is as rustic as the location, and nude bathing is common.
Murrieta Hot Springs Resort, Murrieta, California
- Distance from Route 66: 45 miles south of San Bernardino, about 50 minutes
Murrieta Hot Springs Resort has several pools of varying temperature on the property.
Photo by Bri Amato
For thousands of years, Native Americans prospered in the Temecula Valley, where the Luiseño people discovered the region’s natural springs. Centuries later, in 1902, a German immigrant named Fritz Guenther bought land in present-day Murrieta Hot Springs to develop a spa resort. Guests flocked to Murrieta Hot Springs Resort for its mineral-rich waters and mud baths, until its closure in 1995. It reopened in 2024, as a chic resort with poolside service, cabanas, and more than 20 geothermal pools—most around 104 degrees Fahrenheit—that range from family-friendly to adults-only. The resort is a breezy detour from Route 66 in San Bernardino. Guests can also try a cold plunge, relax in the sauna, and just like old times, enjoy a mud bath. There are 174 rooms for overnight guests, and day passes start at $99.
