Ogden Hot Springs — known to locals simply as the "hot pots" — is a set of rock-lined geothermal pools tucked along the Ogden River at the mouth of Ogden Canyon, on the eastern edge of Ogden, Utah. For years it was a well-worn local soak reached by a short scramble down from State Route 39, and you'll still find it on older lists of Utah's free wild springs. Today, however, the hot pots sit on private property and are closed to the public — reaching them means trespassing, and access is actively enforced. If you've come across this spot in an old guide, this is the important update: it is not an open destination.

The situation is not ambiguous. The pools are on private land at the canyon mouth, and Weber County authorities, working with the property owner and the Utah Highway Patrol, have posted no-trespassing and no-parking signs, run patrols, and installed surveillance cameras; people found on the property past the signs are cited. A chain-link fence and posted pull-outs along SR-39 mark the boundary. The crackdown followed years of mounting problems — a fatality in the pools, drug use, litter, and a real traffic hazard from cars crowding the narrow highway shoulder while people crossed the busy road on foot.

We're listing Ogden Hot Springs so its story is clear, not to send anyone down the canyon wall. Please don't trespass to reach it — the land is private, it's monitored, and citations are being written. Beyond the legal issue, the setting that made the spot risky in the first place hasn't changed: a fast, cold river, slick rock, a dangerous highway crossing, and unregulated pools with no oversight.

The good news is that the region around Ogden still offers plenty of legitimate outdoor water and warm-water options for a day trip — developed hot-spring resorts within driving distance, the trails and swimming spots of the Ogden River Parkway, and the reservoirs and canyons of the Ogden Valley just up SR-39. If a wild soak is what you're after, seek out springs that sit on public land with legal access rather than this closed one. Ogden Canyon itself remains a beautiful drive, and the mouth-of-the-canyon area is worth seeing from the road — just not by hopping the fence.

For now, treat Ogden Hot Springs as a closed chapter in the canyon's history: a place worth knowing about, and worth leaving alone. Respecting the closure keeps the pressure off the landowner and the sheriff's office, and it's the only way a spot like this ever has a chance of reopening under some future managed arrangement.