The data set includes temperature data from the base of the water column along the sediment interface of Ellerbe Creek, Durham, North Carolina, USA, in support of a study regarding groundwater/surface water exchange. The data were collected from 07/18/2017 to 07/26/2017 using a fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing system that has 1.01 m spatial resolution along the linear fiber-optic cable. During data analysis, the original 15 min measurments were averaged (arithmetic mean) for the entire period to potentially indicate colder groundwater inflows.