Walleys Hot Springs are about 4 km south of Genoa on the west edge of Carson Valley (Secs. 21, 22, T13N, Rl9E). The springs are named for David Walley, who built a large hotel and spa on the site in 1862. The resort had 40 bedrooms and, for a time, a physician in attendance. Later the hotel was partly destroyed by fire, and completely demolished in 1929-1930 (Dangberg, 1972). In the 1970s, Ed and Helen Johnson had a bar and dining room in their home on the site of the old hotel. The Johnsons provided copies of the U.S. Steel Corp. maps and well logs from geothermal investigations done there in 1962 and 1963. A modern spa and hotel, Walley’s Hot Spring Resort, was built on the site in the early 1980s. In addition to use of the geothermal fluids for bathing and domestic hot water, the buildings are heated with geothermal energy (Lienau and others, 1988).
The hot springs themselves occur over an area of several acres, and range in temperature from 57.8 to 71.1°C (Waring, 1965). The flow of the springs has been estimated at 2,727 L/min (Lamke and Moore, 1965); Reed and others (1983) reported a flow rate of 75 L/min, probably from one spring. The springs are along the trace of a major fault (figure), which forms the edge of the Carson Range in this area (Ramelli and others, 2003) for at least 19 km (Moore, 1969). This fault has had recent movement, although the plainly visible scarp has been in existence since before 1854. Lawson (1912) has measured the recent displacement on this fault at 13.4 m at Walleys Hot Springs, and believed it to represent movement from a single earthquake. The springs flow from a salient on a topographic low that occurs here along the trace of the fault.
In 1962 and 1963, Columbia Iron Mining Co., subsidiary of U.S. Steel Corp. explored the hot springs area for geothermal energy. They drilled 26 shallow holes to determine the area of maximum water temperature. These were 30-60 m deep, and encountered temperatures up to 82.8°C (see figure). Two deeper wells were also drilled in the area (figure). Mariner and others (1974) have estimated the reservoir temperature at 85°C from a Na-Ca-K geothermometer. Lyles (1985) estimated the reservoir temperature to be 90±20ºC.
Photos
Walleys hot springs resort - spa.