The Geothermal City and Oregon Tech

Klamath Falls sits on top of a hidden furnace. Just below the surface lies a shallow reservoir of naturally heated water, and for more than a century this city has put that heat to work. Downtown, hot water pumped from wells warms buildings and even melts snow off the sidewalks through a geothermal district heating system, one of the oldest of its kind in the United States.

The clearest example rises on the hill above town at Oregon Tech, the Oregon Institute of Technology. When the university moved to this campus in nineteen sixty four, it drilled about two thousand feet down and struck water near one hundred ninety six degrees Fahrenheit. Every building on campus is heated entirely by that geothermal water, saving the school well over a million dollars a year in energy.

Oregon Tech went further still, building Oregon's first geothermal combined heat and power plant, generating its own electricity from the earth, with a peak output of around two hundred eighty kilowatts. It is widely cited as the first university in the country to power itself from geothermal energy. The campus is also home to the Geo Heat Center, a national clearinghouse for geothermal knowledge founded in nineteen seventy five.