Crow Springs

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it: my job is just to do it justice. Fifteen miles north of where you're rolling right now, there's a place called Crow Springs. Named for the birds that gathered there in abundance, it was an oasis, a real one, water in the desert, and for centuries, Indians knew exactly where to find it.

Out here in this country, that kind of knowledge was the difference between making it and not. So Crow Springs mattered. It mattered a long time before anyone else came along to notice.

Then, in 1858, the Butterfield Overland Mail arrived and built a stage relay station right there at the springs. You can almost picture it: the dust settling, the coaches pulling in, the horses grateful for the water. But here's the thing about Crow Springs and the Butterfield line; it didn't last.

Less than a year in, the route shifted south, swinging down to go by Fort Davis, and just like that, the station's purpose dried up faster than the desert itself ever could have managed. The springs kept flowing, though. And the land kept holding its secrets.

Then came the early 1880s and the Apache wars, and Crow Springs found itself relevant again; this time as a camp for Texas Rangers and the U.S. 10th Cavalry. They stationed themselves there occasionally, working to prevent Indians in New Mexico from crossing over to join the war leaders Victorio and Nana down in Mexico. It was strategic ground, that oasis.

It always had been. But here's where the story lands, and it lands quietly, which is sometimes the loudest way a story can end. Today, the springs are dry.

The station has fallen to dust. And the crows (the birds that gave this place its name, that gathered there in abundance for longer than anyone was writing things down) they've disappeared too. Crow Springs is out there, fifteen miles north, holding nothing but the memory of water.

What the marker says

(15 miles north) Named for birds habitually there in abundance, Crow Springs was an oasis for Indians for centuries. The Butterfield Overland Mail in 1858 built a stage relay station at the springs, but used it less than a year before shifting the route south, to go by Fort Davis. During the Apache wars of the early 1880s, Texas Rangers and the U.S. 10th Cavalry camped at Crow Springs occasionally, to prevent Indians in New Mexico from joining the war leaders, Victorio and Nana, in Mexico. Today the springs are dry, the station has fallen to dust, and the Crows have disappeared. (1974)