Wiley's Well is a natural

artesian well An artesian aquifer is a confined aquifer containing groundwater under positive pressure. An artesian aquifer has trapped water, surrounded by layers of impermeable rock or clay, which apply positive pressure to the water contained within th ...

in the

Colorado Desert California's Colorado Desert is a part of the larger Sonoran Desert. It encompasses approximately , including the heavily irrigated Coachella and Imperial valleys. It is home to many unique flora and fauna. Geography and geology The Colorado De ...

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

as well as the name of the surrounding region. It is west of

Blythe, California Blythe is a city in eastern Riverside County, California, United States. It is in the Palo Verde Valley of the Lower Colorado River Valley region, an agricultural area and part of the Colorado Desert along the Colorado River, approximatel ...

, in

Riverside County Riverside County is a county located in the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,418,185, making it the fourth-most populous county in California and the 10th-most populous in the Unit ...

. It is named after Palo Verde storekeeper and postmaster A.P. Wiley who, in 1907, made a shallow well deeper that was dug in 1876 by a

stagecoach A stagecoach is a four-wheeled public transport coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by four horses although some versions are draw ...

company which frequented the nearby

Bradshaw Trail Today's Bradshaw Trail is a historic overland stage route in the western Colorado Desert of Southern California. It is a remnant of the much longer Bradshaw Road, also known as the Road to La Paz, or Gold Road, established in 1862 by William D. ...

. Wiley expanded the well in the hope of attracting business to his remote desert store; it was maintained by local ranchers and cattlemen for years afterward. However, the rapidly falling water table meant a drop of the water's depth to within a dozen years. Today, the well's original depth is only about at best after wet weather and is unfit for drinking. In 1985, the

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. Headquartered in Washington DC, and with oversight over , it governs one eighth of the country's la ...

drilled a new well in depth to support the new Wiley's Well Campground, one of only two developed campgrounds in the

Mule Mountains The Mule Mountains are a north/south running mountain range located in the south-central area of Cochise County, Arizona. The highest peak, Mount Ballard, rises to . Prior to mining operations commencing there, the mountains were heavily fo ...

Long-Term Visitor Area. The water is both hot at 90 °F/32 °C and heavily mineralized; it is pumped into a

cistern A cistern (Middle English ', from Latin ', from ', "box", from Greek ', "basket") is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. Cisterns are distinguished from wells by t ...

to help cool it to a temperature suitable for drinking. Wiley's Well is also a popular

rockhound Amateur geology or rock collecting (also referred to as rockhounding in the United States and Canada) is the non-professional study and hobby of collecting rocks and minerals or fossil specimens from the natural environment.Sinkankas, John. Minera ...

ing site, beginning in the 1930s with the discovery of

geode A geode (; ) is a geological secondary formation within sedimentary and volcanic rocks. Geodes are hollow, vaguely spherical rocks, in which masses of mineral matter (which may include crystals) are secluded. The crystals are formed by the fill ...

beds. Despite its popularity over the decades, the area remains rich with

chalcedony Chalcedony ( , or ) is a cryptocrystalline form of silica, composed of very fine intergrowths of quartz and moganite. These are both silica minerals, but they differ in that quartz has a trigonal crystal structure, while moganite is monoclinic. ...

, citrine,

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...

crystals,

rhyolite Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The mineral ...

and

jasper Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases,Kostov, R. I. 2010. Review on the mineralogical systematics of jasper and related rocks. – Archaeometry Workshop, 7, 3, 209-213PDF/ref> ...

. Though winters are mild, making the campground a popular destination with seasonal visitors from colder climes, summer can be extremely hot with recorded temperatures as high as 130 °F (54 °C). Wiley's Well is easily accessible via the Wiley's Well Road exit off

Interstate 10 Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost cross-country highway in the American Interstate Highway System. I-10 is the fourth-longest Interstate in the United States at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. This freeway is part of the originally pl ...

, west of

Blythe The name Blythe ( or ) derives from Old English ''bliþe'' ("joyous, kind, cheerful, pleasant"; modern ''blithe''), and further back from Proto-Germanic ''*blithiz'' ("gentle, kind"). People * Blythe (given name), including a list of people named ...

. The entrance to the campground is south of the highway.

Notes

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External links and references

Wiley's Well Campground, Bureau of Land Management
* ttps://archive.today/20050404160204/http://www.rockhoundnotes.com/Articles/wileywells_dgr.htm Article about Wiley's Wellby Delmer G. Ross of

La Sierra University La Sierra University (La Sierra or LSU) is a private, Seventh-day Adventist university in Riverside, California. Founded in 1922 as La Sierra Academy, it later became La Sierra College, a liberal arts college, and then was merged into Loma Li ...

Blythe, California Geography of Riverside County, California Lower Colorado River Valley Bradshaw Trail 1907 establishments in California