This area, now covered by Lake Champion, was once the site of springs fed by underground water that also supplied Champion Creek. They were called wells because the Seven Spring Basins closely resembled man-made wells. Buffalo tracks cut deep into the soft sandstone creek banks showed that this was a watering place for great herds of bison. At least four trails crisscrossed the area where north and south Champion Creeks converged. For hundreds of years Indians also camped here, and in the 1880s a small early Mitchell County settlement named Artesia grew up at the site of the wells.