A massive hydrothermal belt interspersed with hot springs runs north and south along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. Explorers and immigrants trekking across the Great Basin discovered hot springs in their travels and bathed in the water if it was not scalding. Heated mineral water was, and still is, believed to have curative properties. By the time communities were established near the western Great Basin's Carson Range in the 1850s, early settlers had claimed most of the hydrothermal springs in the region.