The world's largest pool that uses natural spring water.
It has the habitat of various wild animals in the arid Chihuahua Desert, and is also a source of precious irrigation water.
Balmorhea State Park
It is located near the junction of Interstate 10 between El Paso and San Antonio, Texas, and Interstate 20, which leads to Dallas-Fort Worth.
San Solomon Springs is located within the Balmoral State Park.
The entrance fee for the state park is $7.00 for an adult.
Open all year round, you can use the pool even in the middle of winter for the price of admission alone.
There are no lifeguards.
The park was built between 1934 and 1941 on a wetland that was once used by Native Americans (Mescalero Apache) to let their horses drink.
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was involved in the construction of this building as part of the New Deal policy of providing work and job training opportunities for people who were unemployed during the Great Depression.
It appears that it was operated by a private company until 1968, but it has since become part of the state park system.
There were many retro adobe brick buildings in the park.
The separate changing rooms for men and women were very clean.
Stunning Clarity
The sources of the San Solomon Springs are located 30 feet below the surface of the pool and cannot be seen from the ground.
It is also known as a scuba diving spot because of its great depth.
The huge pool with a capacity of 3.5 million US gallons is filled with a huge amount of spring water, 22 to 28 million US gallons per day, so chemical use is not necessary.
The pool with incredible clarity.
The deeper parts were natural rock bottoms.
Alpaca
It's beautiful!
You'll forget you're in the desert.
Capybara
The water temp is around 95 degrees F all year round.
I visited in winter, and I could see the steam rising in the early morning.
Turtles and fish were swimming gracefully right next to where I was taking the temperature.
The shape of the pool is a perfect circle with wings extending in two directions from the circumference of the sources.
It is thought that the water comes from the same Capitan Formation as the Carlsbad Caverns National Park, which is located 90 miles to the northwest.
Today, this place, which is located at an altitude of 3,300 feet, was under the sea 260 million years ago and there was a coral reef there.
The limestone formed by the action of the coral reef is the Capitan Formation, which functions as a huge aquifer.
The water was draining through the waterway around the diving board.
The original wetlands (cienega) were lost when the Civilian Conservation Corps built the swimming pool, but the desert wetlands have been restored through the Balmorhea State Park Cienega Project, which began in 1995.
It is a habitat for endangered species of snails, crustaceans and fish.
A hot spring enthusiast based in Japan. Toured over 300 North American hot springs while working in Texas from 2016 to 2022. For updates, visit X or Instagram!
