Essays
Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado
Seven Wells
January 29, 2003
“Seven Wells was a very special place. Have you heard of it?” Bill Rust had called the Sibley Nature Center to give an answer to one of the contests we often include as part of this column. After finding out he had the correct answer, but was not the first to call, we began chatting. I had not known of Mitchell County’s Seven Wells.
I have known Bill and his wife Ethel Matthews for a number of years. They often participate in “rendezvous,” a form of historical re-enactment. People with an interest in the fur-trapping days of America’s past join together in large encampments every year. Everybody at the encampment must dress in period costume and camp with only the equipment that would have been available during that period of history.
His question stemmed from his own personal history. Bill lived in the Colorado City area as a child. “Lake Champion covered the site up. Where the two forks of Champion Creek come together there was a deep chasm through bedrock. Sheer forty-foot tall cliffs protected deep pools of water. Even in the worst of droughts, water could always be found at Seven Wells. It was the most popular picnicking place for the folks of Mitchell County.”
The way Bill talked about Seven Wells reminded me of Midland County’s own “Fighting Hollow” in Midland Draw, and “China Grove” in Monahans Draw. Both were in the “pocket forests” of hackberry and soapberry along the draws. Until the late 1940’s both were popular places for gatherings of Midlanders. Before television and air-conditioning, the citizens of every west Texas town had a nearby “special place” for church socials. (I wonder how Fighting Hollow received its name – if a reader has the answer, please call me at 432-684-6827.)
Back in the day when people had to create their own entertainment, one of the most popular forms was the “campfire tale.” (Western history aficionados may remember the collection of stories penned by Andy Adams entitled “Campfire Tales.”) After a fun afternoon of barbecue, ball playing, foot races, and such, a campfire would be started. Somebody would have a guitar and everybody would sing. As the children quieted and the music made everybody mellow, stories would be told.
People like tragic stories. Jim Baum, in “Rodeos, Romeos, and Radios” wrote about Seven Wells and mentions one such story in the book. Supposedly two young lovers committed suicide by jumping into the pool called “The Bottomless Well.” Like Romeo and Juliet, their parents had disapproved of their love.
When I visited with Mr. Baum not long ago, he also told me of another story – that a cowboy in the 1880’s had taken one of the “ladies of the night” from the wide-open boomtown of Colorado City to Seven Wells for a midnight picnic. “They got terribly drunk. When they got back in the buggy to go back to town, the man evidently cracked his whip hard on the horse’s back and yelled so loud that buggy, horse and couple all ended up in the water. Drunken driving took lives even before the days of the automobile.”
At the Heart of West Texas Museum, Louise Crenshaw showed me two three-ring binders filled with photos from Seven Wells. “A popular activity at Seven Wells was “kodaking.” Once the Brownie Camera became available, people recorded their special moments.”
The pictures showed the long association that people of the region had with Seven Wells. Some photos showed people in the finest dresses and suits of that era. Sometimes 100 or more people would be at Seven Wells on a Sunday afternoon.
Urda Wulfjen, a nearby landowner, would furnish the beef and hire men to come out and barbecue. A croquet course would be set up. Young lovers would carve their names on the rocks. Kids would run around hunting arrowheads and pretty stones. Even in the late 1930s, the party-goers would sometimes arrive on horseback. In his book, Baum quotes an old-timer explaining why, “She rode behind you and put her arms around your stomach, and that was the greatest thing in the world.”
Another set of pictures documented the crew of men that had carefully cut a hunk of stone from the Seven Wells site for the museum. For thousands of years, buffalo visited the “wells” to drink. Countless hooves wore a path through the sandstone. The stone with the buffalo tracks is just behind the museum, along with a caboose and other artifacts too large to be displayed inside the Queen Anne home that houses the museum.
Like all west-Texas lakes at the present time, Lake Champion is reaching record low levels. Mr. Baum and Ms. Crenshaw did not know if the Seven Wells area is now high and dry and I did not have time to go find out for myself, but I told them I would like to come back with my canoe to find out. “The County Park at the lake now has a locked gate. So much vandalism occurred that the county commissioners decided to limit access. If you go to the county offices and talk to the folks there, you might be able to get a key.”
The three of us then clucked and pshawed over such supposedly modern-day destructiveness. Young people have always segregated themselves to experiment with wild and crazy behavior, and despite what people today may believe, “vandalism” has always been a part of the mix. Many of the pictograph sites depicting hunting and raiding exploits could have been early examples of “tagging” and I cannot count the number of times I have seen initials or full names carved into rocks and trees combined with dates in the nineteenth century at such gathering places.
The people that have memories of the parties at Seven Wells are becoming fewer these days. They look back with pride and joy, for sure. Seven Wells is special – they made it so.