Used as a watering place and camping ground by Indians since pre-Columbian times, Comanche Springs were possibly visited about 1536 by the Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca on his wanderings through Texas. The expedition of Juan de Mendoza, with his party of Spaniards and Jumano Indians, camped near the waters in 1684. The six major, gushing springs and the beautiful river they formed resulted from water seeping up through geological faults to the earth's surface, supplied by a reservoir in the formation known as Trinity Sands. Among the largest springs in Texas, they were one of the few good watering places in this arid region. They supplied Indians raiding into Mexico on the nearby Comanche war trail, gold seekers traveling to California on the southern route from 1849 and later, the Butterfield Overland Mail stage, and, after 1859, Fort Stockton, which was founded both to protect the mail and stop the Comanche raids. The springs began to be tapped for irrigation as early as 1875, but irrigation projects to the north and west later reduced the underground water supply so much that the springs no longer flow.