Stump Springs
Stump Springs - BLM photo
Stump Springs sits in Pahrump Valley, Nevada, a broad, relatively flat basin separated from the Las Vegas Valley by the Spring Mountains. On the valley’s west side, the Nopah and Kingston Ranges form the boundary, and the open floor can stretch to roughly 25 km wide. Within this setting lies the Stump Spring Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), a band of desert terrain rising from about 780 to 850 meters. A small intermittent stream drains southwest through the ACEC, and the place takes its name from Stump Spring -- a modest water source with outsized importance, because it was used by early travelers moving through this corridor.
That “corridor” includes the overlapping travel world of the Old Spanish Trail and the later Salt Lake Road (often called the Mormon Road). The Old Spanish Trail’s classic use was pack-train commerce, where dependable water and forage determined daily marches. Later, wagon travel and freight on the Salt Lake Road leaned on many of the same practical nodes, not because the routes were identical, but because the landscape kept giving the same answer: if you must cross Pahrump Valley, you plan around the springs.
Geology explains why water is so precious here. Pahrump Valley lies on the southwest margin of the Basin and Range Province and has been shaped by repeated deformation. After Mesozoic compression, Miocene extension helped create today’s basin. The State Line Fault Zone, part of the Walker Lane belt, runs through the valley as a major right-lateral fault system; gravity studies suggest the basin may have formed as a pull-apart structure along this zone. The bordering ranges are largely Late Proterozoic and Paleozoic carbonate and siliciclastic rocks, likely underlying the valley as well, while younger sediments -- Oligocene and later, including Quaternary playa deposits and broad alluvial fans -- blanket the floor. In a basin built like this, a spring is not decoration. It is the reason routes existed at all.
