Loving and Carter identify Desert Wells as a station between Ragtown and Dayton. Pierson locates Desert Wells after Reed's Station, between Nevada and Dayton. Desert Wells existed sometime after July 1861, when it began to serve as a relay station for the Overland Mail Company line. During the last few months of its existence, the Pony Express also used the Desert Wells station facilities. (NPS)

217.12 a stage station] Clemens and his companions had probably arrived at Desert Well Station, about twelve miles southwest of Honey Lake Smith’s (Carlson, 97; Townley, 30–31; see supplement B, map 2).

I have scarcely exaggerated a detail of this curious and absurd adventure. It occurred almost exactly as I have stated it. We actually went into camp in a snow-drift in a desert, at midnight in a storm, forlorn and hopeless, within fifteen steps of a comfortable inn. Chapter 33: Paragraph 8," in Roughing It : an electronic text. 2016