Thousand Springs

Much of what fed the name now runs through pipes. A power company first made electricity from these springs in August 1912, and Idaho Power bought the site in 1916; flumes and fish hatcheries took more of the water as the century went on. Before the plant there was William Priestly's hydraulic ram, built about 1890 to lift spring water to farms on the rim, listed on the National Register in 1975 and possibly buried under the 1912 powerhouse. The springs still pour from the cliff at Ritter Island across the river.

What the plaque says

Thousand Springs Old lava flow changed the geologic structure of this area and thus created a multitude of famous springs here. Over thousands of years, volcanic activity repeatedly spread lava over the Snake River plain, slowly forcing the river southward in a great curve. Successive channels of the river and its tributaries were filled with spongy lava, and became both reservoirs and underground conduits gathering water from far to the northeast. Torrents from one or more of these buried channels burst forth on the opposite canyon wall. 166 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Box Canyon Springs — 3.1 mi
  The eleventh-largest spring in the United States, pouring from the head of a dead-end canyon with water that sank into the lava far to the northeast.
• Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument — 6.0 mi
  Idaho's state fossil is closer to a zebra than a horse, and nearly the whole herd is in a museum in Washington.
• Perrine Bridge — 23 mi
  Four hundred and eighty-six feet of air between deck and river, and the one span in the country you may jump from without asking.
• Shoshone Falls — 25 mi
  Higher than Niagara, and turned up and down on a schedule. What reaches the rim is whatever the canals leave.

More markers nearby

• Salmon Falls — steps away
• Fishing Falls — 3.2 mi
• Payne's Ferry — 3.2 mi
• Fossil Beds — 10 mi