Big Wells

Big Wells is on State Highway 85 seventeen miles northeast of Carrizo Springs in northeastern Dimmit County. It was named for the artesian wells once found in the area; water from the first well supposedly jetted higher than thirty feet out of the ground. Big Wells was one of several land-development projects in Dimmit County between 1909 and 1917. The town began as a 480-acre parcel of the Big Four Colony, an ambitious, 56,000-acre development project that may have grown out of efforts to promote the Bermuda Colony, another Dimmit County development scheme.

In 1908 the Hurst and Brundage Company began to promote the town. Actual settlement at the site apparently began in 1910, and the town grew rapidly, partly because it was situated on the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf tracks. In 1911 a local post office opened; by the next year Big Wells had two schools, and a new, three-story high school was added in 1914. By 1915 the town had 800 residents, a bank, a newspaper, four general stores, a lumber company, and at least one hotel.