Waconda Springs

Somewhere beneath the waters of Waconda Lake lies a lost sacred place. Waconda Springs was a natural artesian spring, a deep pool whose size early visitors estimated very differently, rising on a mound above the Solomon River. For countless generations it was sacred to the peoples of the central plains, the Pawnee, the Kaw, the Wichita, the Kiowa, the Cheyenne, and many others.

The Kanza called it Wakonda, the Great Spirit. In Pawnee tradition, the pool marked an underwater lodge where the animal spirits gathered in sacred council. Later, settlers bottled the mineral water as a tonic and built a health spa here in eighteen eighty four.

Then in the nineteen sixties the federal government dammed the Solomon River for flood control, and by nineteen sixty eight the rising reservoir swallowed the spring forever. A replica nearby keeps its memory alive.