Jacob's Well is noted by many sources as a Pony Express station. The station did not exist when Richard Burton passed through the area on October 8, 1860, but it probably went up a short time later, or as part of Overland Mail Company contract. General Frederick Jacobs and a crew of men dug a well and erected a small stone structure that served as a stop for both Pony Express riders and the Overland Mail Company line. Very little, if any, evidence of the station remains at the site today.
Jacob’s Well is often included in published lists of Pony Express Stations. However there was no station at the site in October of 1860, 7 months after the inception of the Pony, as documented by Sir Richard Burton.
Today nothing remains but a few old stones from which the old well has long since caved in with rock and dirt. It was not only was a change station for the Pony Express until its demise as well as the Overland Stage Line until 1869, but it later served the Hill Beachy Road to Hamilton and the White Pine Mines. (Expedition Utah)
Our route lay over a long divide, cold but not unpicturesque, a scene of light tinted mountain mahogany, black cedar, pure snowy hill, and pink sky. After ten miles we reached the place where the road forks; that to the right passing through Pine Valley falls into the gravelly ford of the Humboldt River, distant from this point eighty to eighty five miles. After surmounting the water shed we descended over bench land into a raw and dreary plain, in which greasewood was more plentiful than sage bush. Huntingdon Valley is traversed by Smith's Fork, which flows northward to the Humboldt River; when we crossed it, it was a mere rivulet. Our camping ground was at the farther end of the plain, under a Pass called after the chief Chokop; the kanyon emitted a cold draught like the breathing caves of Kentucky. We alighted at a water near the entrance, and found bunch grass, besides a little fuel. After two hours the wagon came up with the stock, which was now becoming weary, and we had the usual supper of dough, butter, and coffee. I should have slept comfortably enough upon a shovel and a layer of carpet bags, had not the furious south wind howled like the distant whooping of Indians.
(The City of the Saints, p 480)