Lava Hot Springs, Idaho • On a recent sunny spring Friday, the five famous hot-springs pools that give this town its name surprisingly crowded.
As numerous large trucks and the occasional train zoomed past high on the hill above the state park that houses the pools with temperatures of 102 to 112 degrees, bathers such as Brittany Skaur and James Bond soaked in the sun and the water about 150 miles north of Salt Lake City.
What brings someone such as Skaur from her home in Idaho Falls three or four times per year to this little town that time seems to have forgotten?
"The hot water," she said. "It's relaxing, peaceful and beautiful. It nurtures your soul and eases your stress level."
Bond said he enjoys visiting Lava and nearby hot springs complexes such as Downata, near Downey, or Utah's Crystal, due north of Brigham City, in the dead of winter.
"We frequent all the hot spots," he said. "Our family was originally from the Bear Lake area, and my grandfather was James Bond before there was a James Bond."
Lava, a town of about 400 permanent residents, is a popular weekend destination for many Wasatch Front families. Though it can be crowded in the winter — when the hot springs, funky hotels, small arcade and weekend bingo games draw folks — things really get busy on Memorial Day weekend.
That's when the town's huge Olympic-style swimming complex — with its 10-meter diving platform and massive water slides — opens for the summer. (There is a preview weekend, beginning May 16).
Families often gather on the large lawn next to the outdoor pool for picnics. While no cooking is allowed, swimmers can bring coolers and outside food.
The indoor pool complex, which, like the hot springs on the upper end of town, is open year-round, includes a climbing wall, diving boards and a kiddie cove with fountains and slides for toddlers that opened last year.
Idaho State Parks manages the Olympic-size pool on the lower end of town and the hot-pool complex on the upper end.
"It gets busy on Memorial Day and stays pretty busy every weekend," said Joni Swenson, who works at the hot springs. "We get tour buses full of foreign visitors to use the natural hot springs. … If you don't have a reservation ... you may not have a place to stay."
There are some private campgrounds in the area, as well as a nine-hole golf course. Nearby Downata Hot Springs, with its black-hole water slide and small cabins, offers some variety. So do Riverdale Hot Springs near Preston and Crystal Hot Springs north of Brigham City.
Local concessionaires rent innertubes to float the Portneuf River that flows through the middle of Lava and is warmed by the 2.5 million gallons of hot spring water that runs through the hot-springs pools daily.
Rory Simons, a docent at the small museum in Lava Hot Springs, said visitors who hope to stay on the July 4 weekend should get reservations at least a month in advance. Many hotels in the area fill up on summer weekends, and families often reserve park pavilions six months in advance.
Simons said the most popular exhibit in the museum involves Ligertown, a now-gone private lion and tiger complex that closed in November 1995 when 19 lions escaped into town, drawing national attention to the area.
According to a history of Lava Hot Springs provided by the South Bannock County Museum, Bannock and Shoshone tribes gathered at Lava to bathe, rest and worship. Mountain men came to the area around 1811. The area was once called Dempsey, after an Irish trapper named Bob Dempsey who settled the area with his American Indian wife in 1851. It was also called Hall City, after homesteader John Hall. The town was incorporated on July 24, 1915.
Trains brought more tourists into the areas in the 1870s.
Today, largely because tiny Lava Hot Springs is located 11 miles off Interstate 15, the town retains a quiet charm. It is filled with small restaurants, hotels and motels — some with their own hot springs — and funky tourist shops.
Most people, though, come for the water, the weather and to enjoy the huge swimming complex or take a tube ride on the river near the bottom of the little valley where Lava Hot Springs is located.
wharton@sltrib.com
Twitter: @tribtomwharton