Hot Wells

Hot Wells was a resort and railroad community on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad twenty-four miles southeast of Sierra Blanca in southeastern Hudspeth County. It was founded before 1912, when a post office was established there. John Hackett, the first postmaster, was also the proprietor of the Hot Wells Bath House and Town Site. In 1914 the town's twenty inhabitants included Mrs. S. M. Ballew, proprietor of a hotel, and H. O. Jett and Sons, cattle breeders. By the mid-1920s the community's estimated population had fallen to ten; it continued to be reported at that level until the mid-1940s, when it rose to twenty-five, but around that time maps of the area indicated that abandoned dwellings outnumbered those still in use. The Hot Wells post office closed in 1936. The community name was shown on maps of the area through the late 1980s, although the community had apparently ceased to exist by the mid-1950s.