About Outdoor Locator

We haven't visited these places ourselves, and every page says so rather than implying otherwise. Entries are compiled from public government data (the NOAA thermal springs archive and the USGS Geographic Names Information System) and from land-manager sources: the National Park Service, US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and state park systems. Swimming holes have no state or federal register, so those listings are compiled by hand from public park-service pages and other open sources. Where a fee, an access rule or a legal status comes from a specific source, we cite it and date it. Full detail on what each source does and doesn't confirm lives on our methodology page.

Most write-ups about a hot spring or a swimming hole read like a postcard: a nice photo, a short description, maybe directions. What they skip is the part that actually determines whether you should go: is it legal to be there, is it currently open, and what will it cost. We built this site around that gap. Every state page leads with a table of fee, access type and legal status before any narrative description, because that information decides the trip.

This is a reference tool, not a booking service. It isn't a substitute for checking conditions yourself before you travel. Fees change. Roads close. Land managers issue closures with little warning. Where our sources don't give a clear, current answer, we mark a listing "requires confirmation" instead of guessing, and we recommend confirming directly with the managing agency before any visit, especially to a site with restricted or unclear status.

Public data goes stale. A road washes out, a fee doubles, a state buys a piece of private land, and none of that reaches our sources on the same day it happens. If you find a listing that's wrong, closed or out of date, we'd rather hear about it and fix it than leave it standing. See the contact page to report it.