DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Way out in Brewster County, there's a place called Leoncita Springs — and if water out here in this hard, dry country has a way of drawin' people in, well, Leoncita Springs has been provin' that point for a long, long time. The first time this place shows up in the written record, it's 1684.
A man named Juan Dominguez de Mendoza camped here. Sixteen-eighty-four. Think about that for a second.
That's not a misprint. The springs were already doing what springs do — offerin' water and a place to rest — and Mendoza was takin' full advantage of it. Then the springs go quiet in the record for a good while.
But by 1857, they're back in business in a serious way. Leoncita Springs became a stage stand on the San Antonio to El Paso route, cutting right through Musquiz Cañon. For twenty-six years — 1857 all the way to 1883 — travelers comin' and goin' across that long, punishing stretch of Texas would've known this name.
Known it maybe the way you know a word you've been waiting to say after a long silence. Now here's where the story takes a turn even a tall-tale man couldn't entirely make up. In 1859 — right in the middle of that stage-stand era — a camel train camped at Leoncita Springs.
A camel train. Commanded by Lieutenant W. H.
Echols. Camels. In West Texas.
Camped right here at the same springs where Mendoza had rested his party nearly two centuries before. The state of Texas thought this place worth remembering, and in 1936 they erected this marker to say so. Leoncita Springs.
Conquistadors, stagecoaches, and camels all drank from the same water. Some places just have a way of pulling history to them.
What the marker says
First known to history when Juan Dominguez de Mendoza camped here in 1684. Stage stand on the San Antonio to El Paso route through Musquiz Cañon 1857-1883. A camel train commanded by Lieut. W.H. Echols camped here in 1859. Erected by the State of Texas 1936