EAGLE SPRING. Eagle Spring is at the northern edge of the Eagle Mountains and eight miles southwest of Allamoore in southeastern Hudspeth County (at 30°59' N, 105°06' W). The spring was well-known to nineteenth-century travelers. In 1849 Capt. Robert S. Neighbors^qv called the spring Puerto de la Cola del Águila, or Haven of the Eagle Tail. A year later Lt. S. G. French noted of the spring, "The water did not run, but merely oozed out of the ground, and was collected in numerous holes dug for that purpose." And in 1867 Maj. Edward Meyer described the spring as "a limited supply of not very good water." More important than the quality of its water was its strategic location. From 1854 to 1882 stagecoaches and wagon trains using the San Antonio-El Paso Mail^qv stopped at Eagle Spring for water. The spring was also popular with the Mescalero Apaches. In 1854 they stole the livestock of a wagon train camped at the springs, and in 1857 one wagon train passed the spring without stopping "on account of Indians whose regular stopping place it is reputed to be." In 1862, during the Civil War,^qv the Eagle Spring site was occupied by Union army troops, and in 1879 and 1880 a cavalry outpost was established there as part of the final campaign against the Mescalero chief Victorio.^qv A historical marker and the ruins of the stage station stand about half a mile north of the spring. The surrounding flat to rolling terrain with local escarpments is surfaced by deep, fine sandy loams that support hardwood forest, brush, and grasses. In 1972 the discharge from Eagle Spring was less than half a pint of fresh water per second. In 1976 the discharge of about a third of a pint per second disappeared into gravel about fifty yards downstream.