Willow Springs

Water close to the surface drew people to these sand hills long before the forty-niners. Interdunal ponds, or a hole dug to the shallow water table, could supply a camp. Apaches cut a trail across the county from Monument Springs in New Mexico to Shafter Lake, and Comanches used the White Sandhills and Blue Mountain as meeting places from the seventeenth century until the 1870s. Capt. Randolph B. Marcy brought soldiers into the county on September 25, 1849, and on June 29, 1875, Col. William R. Shafter followed Comanches here with eighty-one men.

What the plaque says

Willow Springs Located 6.6 miles east of this site in the Sand Hills, Willow Springs was known to Comanche Indians and to West Texas pioneers as an important source of water. It was frequently used by gold seekers on their way to California after the 1849 gold discovery there. In 1901,"Judge" A. Hayes found the remains of a charred 40-wagon train at Willow Springs. Evidence indicates there had been a killing at the site, and artifacts from the unidentified massacre have been placed at Sul Ross State University in Alpine. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Million Barrel Museum — 9.5 mi
  An oil reservoir that could not hold oil, then a water park that lasted one day, now a museum in Monahans with the story of the Pyote bomber base beside it.
• Roy Orbison Museum — 10 mi
  A volunteer-run room in the oil town where Roy Orbison spent his high school years, opened on request, with a guitar he played and his tinted prescription sunglasses.
• Monahans Sandhills State Park — 13 mi
  A small corner of a 200-mile dune field east of the Pecos, where fresh water lies just under the sand and a forest of shin oak grows no higher than your knee.

More markers nearby

• Ward County — 9.2 mi
• Million Barrel Tank — 9.6 mi
• Roy Orbison — 10 mi
• Wink — 10 mi