Wells, Nevada

Wells, Nevada is one of those forgettable places. People whiz by on I-80 or stop for gas and probably never remember its name.
    For thousands of years Wells has been a place where travelers pause to replenish. Shoshone Indians, Hudson Bay fur trappers and mountain men camped in the area. Covered wagons traveling the California Trail stopped in the 1800s before tackling the rest of the trail west. They camped not far from what today is downtown, about eighty miles from where Idaho and Utah meet. It was a good place to rest a while. It had a dozen springs and meadows with plenty of fresh water and grass. The area became known as Humboldt Wells and was the source of the Humboldt River, which those wagon trains followed all the way to the Humboldt Sink just outside of what is today Lovelock, Nevada. When the Central Pacific established a division point in Humboldt Wells, a town grew up around it and the name was shortened to Wells.
    Shortly after 6 am on February 21, 2008 a 6.3 magnitude earthquake rudely awakened the residents. Its epicenter was just 11 miles away. Virtually every house, 700 of them and all the businesses sustained some sort of damage. Luckily only three people were hurt. But the historic district along Front Street was devastated.
    March is my usual month to do what I call my walkabout, which is simply to mosey around Nevada and see what can be seen that I haven’t already sighted and to revisit favorite places. After attending Shooting the West in Winnemucca, another one of my favorite habits, I shoved off for Ely, but first there had to be a stop in Wells to see the damage. As I walked along historic Front Street, I harkened back to my last visit, long before the earthquake. I remembered that not all of the buildings were occupied then. Some were definitely showing their age, looking as if the only thing holding them up was their next-door neighbor. I surveyed the damage to these old buildings and thought, “To restore them will be a big job, costing a ton of money and requiring townspeople to unite behind the effort.” Is Wells up to that? I don’t know, but where there’s a will, there’s a way and rural Nevadans are hardy souls who have a lot of grit and determination. They just might pull it off.