Howard Springs (Crockett County, Texas)

Howard Springs, was a historical spring, located in the stream channel of Howard Draw at an elevation of 2031 feet, just north of the mouth of Government Canyon at its confluence with Howard Draw in what is now Crockett County, Texas.[1]

History

Howard Springs was an important watering hole for Native Americans in the dry country between Devils River and the Pecos River.[2] Later it was the only reliable water on the San Antonio-El Paso Road between the Head of Devil's River 44 miles to the southeast and Live Oak Creek 30.44 miles to the northwest near Fort Lancaster on the Pecos River.[3]

Its early appearance was described by Robert A. Eccleston, one of a party of forty-niners traveling with the U. S. Army expedition that established the San Antonio-El Paso Road in 1849. In Eccleston's diary of that trip he writes about the spring where they camped on August 2–3, 1849:

"The water...where we took it from, it was impregnated with vegetable matters that it was hardly fit to drink."
"The hills that surrounded this valley are all nearly the same height & uniformly flat, upon the top. This place had formerly been a great Indian rendevous,(sic) as bones of all kinds of beasts were strewn about. Even the wood I gathered for our fire had formed a kind of tent or covering".[4]

A favorite living place, native tribes fought bitterly to control these springs, killing many teamsters and settlers in the vicinity as late as 1872.[2]

Later local ranchers overgrazed the region, killing off the formerly abundant ground cover, increasing the force of runoff, which then washed gravel into the springs and filled them up, and changing the course of the stream bed. Seeps still emerge beneath the surface of a nearby 200-meter-long pond in Howard Draw. Oilfield drilling recently has contaminated this water.[2]

References

  1. ↑ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Howard Springs
  2. 1 2 3 Gunnar M. Brune, Springs of Texas, Volume 1, Texas A&M University Press, 2002, p.141-142
  3. ↑ Table of distances from Texas Almanac, 1859, Book, ca. 1859; digital images, (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth123765/ accessed November 12, 2013), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association, Denton, Texas
  4. ↑ Robert Eccleston, Edited by George P. Hammond and Edward H. Howes, Overland to California on the Southwestern Trail, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1950, pp.85-86.

Coordinates: 30°28′31″N 101°28′31″W / 30.47528°N 101.47528°W / 30.47528; -101.47528


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