Hot Springs Near Zion National Park
There are no hot springs inside Zion National Park. The region's geothermal water surfaces twenty minutes west of it, at a spring that has been closed to the public since 2013 — and there is now somewhere you can actually soak in it.
Searches for hot springs at Zion turn up a confusing mix of results, and the confusion is worth clearing up before you plan a day around it.
There are no hot springs inside Zion National Park. The question below spells out why, but the short version is geological: the park is carved sandstone with a snowmelt river running through it, and nothing there is warm.
The geothermal water people are actually looking for is real, but it surfaces outside the park.
Where the hot water comes from
About twenty minutes west of the park boundary, the Virgin River cuts through a fault zone at the edge of the Hurricane Cliffs. Heated, heavily mineralized water rises along that fault and enters the river directly, at around 107 degrees where it emerges. The spring complex has two names in local use: La Verkin Sulphur Springs, and Pah Tempe — a Southern Paiute name for the place.
The sulphur content is not subtle. It is the reason the site is unmistakable from some distance away, and the reason the water carries the mineral reputation it does.
The springs have a long history as a soaking place — a resort operated there through much of the twentieth century, and generations of southern Utah residents grew up going to it.
Pah Tempe itself is closed, and has been for years
This is the part that catches people out, because guides and aggregator pages still describe it as somewhere you can visit.
The spring is not open to the public, and has not been for over a decade. The question below covers who owns it and why it closed.
What matters for planning is that the internet has not caught up. Pah Tempe appears on hot-springs aggregators, in listicles and on map pins as though you could turn up and get in, and a good deal of that material is a decade old and was never revised. Some of it even carries directions to the gate.
So: do not plan a day around it, and do not attempt the gate. It is fenced, signed and monitored, and the ground beyond it is genuinely hazardous rather than merely off-limits. There has been discussion between Hurricane City and the water district about reopening the site for recreation with the city managing it, but nothing is scheduled, and a reopening would be widely reported locally when it happens.
Where you can actually soak that water
Zion Canyon Hot Springs, in La Verkin, opened in 2025 and is the answer to the question most people are really asking. The water district leases a portion of the Pah Tempe flow to the resort, which draws, treats and circulates it through the pools before returning treated water to the river — so you are soaking in the same geothermal source, delivered somewhere it can be used safely.
It is a purpose-built facility rather than a wild spring: more than fifty bodies of water, including a large set of natural mineral pools running through a range of temperatures from tepid to hot, alongside cold plunges, saunas and a freshwater pool. Part of it is family-friendly and part is adults-only. It is operated by WorldSprings, which runs a comparable facility at Glenwood Springs in Colorado.
From the resort it is roughly 25 to 30 minutes to Zion's south entrance, which makes it a genuinely good end to a day on the trails — the pairing of a long hike and a hot soak is the reason it was built where it was.
What else is nearby, and what is not
There is no second hot spring in the immediate area. Utah has geothermal water elsewhere — Meadow and Fifth Water are both well known — but those are hours north and not a day trip from here.
What the region does have is warm water of a different kind. The reservoirs east of St. George warm up substantially through the summer, and Sand Hollow and Quail Creek are swimming as much as boating for a good part of the year. Veyo Pool north of town is spring-fed rather than geothermal, and cold. The wider water-recreation picture covers the rest.
If a soak is what you are after, though, La Verkin is the only place in this corner of Utah that delivers it.
Frequently asked questions
Are there hot springs in Zion National Park?
No. There is no geothermal water anywhere inside the park boundary — not in Zion Canyon, not on Kolob Terrace and not on the east side. The Virgin River that runs through the canyon is fed by snowmelt and storm runoff and stays cold year round, which is why the Narrows is a hike that needs proper footwear and, for much of the year, a drysuit rather than swimwear. The confusion comes from a genuine geothermal spring about twenty minutes west of the park, outside the boundary, and from a hot springs resort named after the canyon rather than located in it.
Can you soak at Pah Tempe Hot Springs?
No, and not since 2013. The site is owned by the Washington County Water Conservancy District, which has held title since 1994, and the gate is locked and the property monitored. The closure is a safety matter rather than a formality: the springs sit directly beneath cliffs that shed rock, and the 2011 flooding on the Virgin River demonstrated what the water does to the terraces beside it. Hurricane City and the district have discussed a partnership that would reopen it for recreation, with the city as the recreational arm, but no timeline has been set.
How far is Zion Canyon Hot Springs from Zion National Park?
Roughly 25 to 30 minutes by road. The resort is in La Verkin, on the highway corridor between St. George and Springdale, so it sits on the route most visitors already drive to reach the park's south entrance. That position is deliberate rather than incidental — it works as the end of a hiking day rather than as a separate outing, and it is about the same distance from St. George in the other direction, which makes it reachable whichever end of the corridor you are staying at.