Desert Well Station (Overland Mail and Stage Station)
Lyon County, Lyon County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Desert Well Station (Overland Mail And Stage Station). Located approximately one mile south are the remains of a typical stage station of the period 1843 to 1869, an era of transition between the arrival of the first emigrant wagon trains and the completion of the transcontinental railroad.Desert Well Station, which was later known as Nelsons, achieved a measure of fame when Mark Twain wrote of his experience there in Roughing It. The original site featured two wells, an inn, and corrals. One of the wells was used exclusively by camels brought to the Nevada desert to haul salt to the mines on the Comstock.
Erected by Ms. Ethel Lawson
The Story
About a mile south lie the remains of Desert Well Station, a typical stage stop of the 1843–1869 era that bridged the age of emigrant wagon trains and the transcontinental railroad. Later known as Nelson's, it won a measure of fame when Mark Twain recounted his stop there in Roughing It. The original site had two wells, an inn, and corrals—one well reserved for the camels famously brought to the Nevada desert to haul salt to the Comstock mines.
Why it matters
Desert Well Station evokes the overland stage era that carried people and mail across the Great Basin, complete with the short-lived camel experiment and a young Mark Twain passing through.
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Related people
- · Mark Twain
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Buckland's Station
Lyon County, NV
Samuel S. Buckland settled here in 1859, starting a ranch, a station for the Overland Stage Company, and a tent hotel, and building the first bridge across the Carson River below Genoa. In 1860 his station became the assembly point for volunteers in the Pyramid Lake War and a remount stop on the Pony Express. He later ran a store supplying soldiers at nearby Fort Churchill, and built his two-story house from timbers salvaged when the fort was dismantled.
Dayton
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Dayton is among the oldest settlements in Nevada, born as a riverside resting spot where California-bound emigrants paused after crossing the desert. In 1849 Abner Blackburn plucked a gold nugget from the mouth of Gold Canyon, sparking the prospecting that a decade later uncovered the fabulous Comstock ore bodies at Gold Hill and Virginia City. The town cycled through several names before settling on Dayton in 1861, honoring John Day, who surveyed its streets, and it thrived for decades as a milling and trading hub and as the Lyon County seat until 1911.
Union Hotel & Post Office
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The Union Hotel was rebuilt on this spot in 1870 after fire destroyed the original across the street, its new quarters also housing a dining room and barber shop. Most telling is the free-standing rock wall here—the original wall of an overland stage station and Pony Express stop. Together they mark a waypoint on the great transportation routes that knit together the mid-nineteenth-century West.
Hall's Station
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In the early 1850s Spafford Hall, the area's first permanent settler, built a station and trading post here to serve emigrants pressing on toward California. After a hunting injury in 1854 he sold out, and the post passed through several hands — becoming McMarlin's Station and later belonging to Major Ormsby, who died in 1860 at the first battle of the Pyramid Lake War. The site is also remembered as the place where the area's first recorded dance was held on New Year's Eve, 1853.