Site of the Old City Spring

Duane's take

The marker tells it this way, and I'm just passin' it along. Way back when Johnson County was still findin' its feet, there was a spring. Not just any patch of mud and seep, mind you; a genuine, reliable, show-up-every-time spring.

Explorers found it. Confederate Camp Henderson found it. Settlers found it, too, and they kept on findin' it, comin' from many miles out just to wash, just to haul water, just to visit a while and let the world slow down around something cold and clean and dependable.

There's a reason folks will travel a long way for a sure thing. This spring was a sure thing. Now here's where it gets interesting.

Somebody figured out there was money in all that thirst. Boys (actual boys) would take a bucket, dip it full, and tote that water to merchants in town. A nickel a bucket.

You think about how many trips that took, how many buckets, how many nickels changing hands at the edge of a brick-lined pool on the Texas prairie. That pool would get dipped so dry you'd wonder if the whole enterprise was finished. But the spring always refilled it.

Always. You could drain it down to nothing and come back later and find it ready again, like it had somewhere else to be and just hadn't left yet. Eventually, the first city well went down and tapped that same source: the spring that had been there all along, serving explorers and soldiers and settlers and bucket-totin' boys one nickel at a time.

Some things don't stop givin'. They just go deeper.

What the marker says

Early-day watering spot for explorers, Confederate Camp Henderson, settlers. People came many miles to wash, haul water, visit. At a nickel a bucket, boys "toted" water to merchants. Brick-lined pool often was dipped dry, but spring always refilled it. First city well tapped source.