- Image
Water for Dugway Station had to be hauled from Simpson’s Springs. Although three wells were dug over several years, one reaching a depth of 120 feet, no water was found. Noted as a “substation” by Horace Greeley, nothing very permanent was ever constructed at the site. In 1860 a shelter was placed over a dugout and an adobe chimney installed. In the 1890′s, the location was utilized as a halfway stop by the Walters and Mulliner Stage Co. on the route between Fairfield and Ibapah. A monument is located at the site today. Physical evidence at the station site is limited to a disturbed area containing poorly preserved metal objects (possibly from a corral or blacksmithing area north of the wash) and some concentrated stone.
Also known as Shortcut Pass, it is located on BLM land east of Dugway Pass, which connects the Dugway mountain range to the north and the Thomas range on the south. The station was located ~1½ mile south of the modern road, about 8¼ miles west of Riverbed. Burton says that the station was simply a dugout roofed over with split cedar logs, with a crude adobe chimney. Three wells were attempted, the deepest being dug to a depth of more than 153 feet. All were dry, and water had to be hauled from Simpson or Riverbed. Nothing remains but a monument.(Expedition Utah)
Most sources agree on the identity of this station, listed as Dugway in the 1861 mail contract. Fike and Headley place this site ten and one-half miles from River Bed Station. A dugout with an adobe chimney probably served as the main structure at the station, noted for its three deep wells and lack of water. Someone hauled water from Simpson's Springs to Dugway on a regular basis. Dugway also experienced some activity in the 1890s as a stopping point for the Walters and Mulliner Stage Line from Fairfield to Ibapah. As late as 1979, a monument marked the station site area.
"For sixty- eight miles there was but one break in it. I do not remember that this was really a break; indeed it seems to me that it was nothing but a watering depot in the midst of the stretch of sixty-eight miles. If my memory serves me, there was no well or spring at this place, but the water was hauled there by mule and ox teams from the further side of the desert. There was a stage station there. It was forty-five miles from the beginning of the desert, and twenty-three from the end of it.
"We plowed and dragged and groped along, the whole live-long night, and at the end of this uncomfortable twelve hours we finished the forty-five- mile part of the desert and got to the stage station where the imported water was. The sun was just rising. It was easy enough to cross a desert in the night while we were asleep; and it was pleasant to reflect, in the morning, that we in actual person had encountered an absolute desert and could always speak knowingly of deserts in presence of the ignorant thenceforward. And it was pleasant also to reflect that this was not an obscure, back country desert, but a very celebrated one, the metropolis itself, as you may say. All this was very well and very comfortable and satisfactory—but now we were to cross a desert in daylight. This was fine—novel—romantic—dramatically adventurous—this, indeed, was worth living for, worth traveling for! We would write home all about it."