The Arizona sentinel., 1894-04-28
TIE TRsGEDY OF KINGS WELLS An RnciGenG of Pioneer EAays on the Arizona Desert
 in Yuma County.


 hardy adventurers in the early days of Arizona's history, was we'll digging In those days travelled roads were few. and on all of them the watering places were far be- tween. The lucky man who sue ceeded in sinking q shaft to water on one of those desert roads had a property that was better than @ gold mine, for the returns com menced to flow in the moment the water commenced flowing in his well. In the midst of thirsty desert water is as good as cash, and it's owner at once blossoms into a station keeper on the sure road to wealth. The great freight teams, with eight and ten mules must stop there for water if for nothing else; the stage company would leave its relays of stock there. pay
 ng him for the keeping of the lOstlers and horses, and bringing ravelers unasked to his rough and ready table d'hote, barrel of whis key and a tin cup or two formed his bar, to which, in those days, every passer was a customer and everything in sight was for sale, from his woodpile and haystack of desert cut by his hired man, to the very water in his we'll
 To an adventurous, energetic man, with no capital but his strength and courage, such a pros pect was alluring; and many were the wells attempted on all the iesert roads in the territory. Of course, as is the case in many other lines of business the failures far exceeded the successes, and the old travelled roads are dotted to-day with many dangerous open shafts, that never touched water, where hardy prospectors drove them down 100 to 300 feet before aband- ching them to try their luck else where. The record of failure is more or less pathetic with it's sug- gestions of wasted energy and dis appointed hopes, and here, in these dreary solitudes, it would seem still more so; yet, said one of the well diggers to me not long time since, when relating how he and another had "put in" three months sinking a 300 feet we'll, only to abandon it and try somewhere else. "Why, we had nothing but our time invested in that job, and we had more time'n we knew what to do with after we got through" "
 Then, too, it was frequently ac- compained with danger, this well digging for Indians might swoop down on the lonely worker at un- expected moments, and, isolated as they were, with twenty to fifty miles of lonely desert between them and the nearest human hab- itation, they had but their own vigilance and pluck to depend on in case of any accident. Indeed, if the history of the desert wells of Arizona, should 1t ever be written, would prove deeply interesting one, for there are but few of them to which the story of some dark tragedy does not attach. In con versation with an old freighter, who used to drive his teams on the La Paz road thirty years ago, l recently unearthed the history of these wells, from an almost forgot ten past. The place is still marked on the map of Arizona as Kings Well, but 1t was abandoned on the occasion 1 am about to relate, and is now nothing but half covered shaft, with a lonely grave beside 1t.
 THE BEGINING OF KINGS WELL.
 In December, 1865, Dave King and Dan, surname unknown started out for the prosperous mining camp of Wickenburg, on the Hassayampa river, to try thcil luck digging a well on the La Paz road. By this road the distance was 125 miles from Wickenburg tC La Paz, and in all that distance there were only two wells. Could they succeed in striking water al some point thirty or forty miles from Wickenburg, there would be