A century and a half ago, travelers who reached Las Vegas on the long
Santa Fe Trail journey could stop at a spring-fed well for a drink and to water their teams. The same well, dug by settlers around 1840, now restored, it is the nation's oldest surviving well along the Santa Fe Trail. The well, or Hays Springs Well as it is sometimes called, is located at 2213 Hot Springs Blvd. Visitors today toss coins into the historic wishing well - a water source that, in the 1930s, granted residents wishes for releif from a crushing drought. In the grip of the Dust Bowl era, the Rio Gallinas and virtually every well in Las Vegas went dry. The 6" x 17" shale bowl well, fed by seven springs, remained the community's only constant source of waterand saved the people from drought. The well has a depth of just under 4 feet and maintains a year-round temperature of 50 degrees.