Wells: Crossroads of the Emigrant Trail and the Iron Road
Nevada
Two great routes through the West converged where Wells now stands. The first was the old Emigrant Trail, which funneled wagon trains through a gap in the hills where springs fed the headwaters of the Humboldt River. The second arrived in the late eighteen sixties, when the Central Pacific Railroad laid tracks through the same gap and established a stop called Humboldt Wells.
Hotels and stores soon lined a single street beside the tracks. Today the town sits at the junction of Interstate Eighty and US Ninety-Three, still the same crossroads it has always been, now trading wagon trains for long-haul truckers.
