Views from the Road 2006 Texas 62
West Texas, Comanche Springs, 2006
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Comanche Springs was the site of Ft. Stockton, established in the mid 1860s to ward off Plains Indians, America expanding its interests and maintaining the trail to its expansion in the further west. The Fort is long gone but it seemed to me the feel of it was still there with the American Flag flying protectively over the gas station, proclaiming for all that this is the U.S.A., as if there would be any question about it. Beyond that little dismal "Welcome to Comanche Springs" wall and the flag waving high in the desert breeze seemed the ghostly spirit of the garrison.
As for Comanche Springs, in brief, it was/is the site of an ancient aquifer that was the only reliable source of water for miles around in that dry country, producing 35 million gallons a day, an oasis that had been populated for thousands of years by indigenous peoples. Then the Spanish showed up, and then America and Fort Stockton.
In the early 1900s it was a little resort area and the springs fed the town and little farms. This ended for the little Americans with their little town and little resort and little farms when big muscle farming plopped down over the aquifers with modern pumps and their ability to suck up all that water for their irrigation projects. Mine! All mine! The springs ran dry but for certain times of the year when lands weren't irrigated.
"In 1954, the Texas Supreme Court stepped in and upheld Rule of Capture, a remnant of British common law that states a landowner owns all the water beneath their property. The decision ratified the right of irrigators west of town to pump as much water as they wished from under the land they owned, even if such pumping negatively impacted other users of groundwater. (Today, Texas is the only western state where Rule of Capture, rather than Reasonable Use, governs use of groundwater.)"
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