LEONA SPRINGS. Leona (or Mountain Lioness) Springs is actually four groups of springs on the Leona River in Uvalde County, the first just southeast of Uvalde and the last seven miles southeast of the city. The springs rise under artesian pressure from the limestone of the Edwards aquifer, recharged by the Nueces River and streams to the northwest. The spring flow generally lags behind the rainfall by several months. The four main groups of springs once flowed from a higher level, but nearly all the springs are now beneath the surface of the river.

The first group, just south of the Uvalde municipal golf course, powered a gristmill in 1858 and was a principal source of water for the city until a well was drilled in 1893. The second group is in a county park two miles southeast of Uvalde, the site of Fort Inge in the mid-nineteenth century. The Texas Rangers^qv later had a camp at the site. The springs are beneath the waters of an old irrigation reservoir on the Leona River now used for recreation. The third group is 3½ miles southeast of Uvalde, in a travertine formation that forms a small waterfall just above a flow-measuring station. The combined yearly flow of these three springs fluctuates, from a trickle in the six-year period 1952-58 to 476 gallons per second in 1977. The fourth group of springs is seven miles southeast of Uvalde in Leona Estates. Its discharge emerges underwater just upstream from an old washed-out irrigation dam on the Leona River. The last measurement of its flow was thirty-eight gallons per second in 1947.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Gunnar Brune, Springs of Texas, Vol. 1 (Fort Worth: Branch-Smith, 1981).

Gunnar Brune