Seminole Draw is a good reminder to verify water conditions

Seminole Draw starts just south of U.S. 180/62 near the New Mexico line and runs sixty miles southeast across western and central Gaines County, down into northeastern Andrews County, where it joins Monument Draw to make Mustang Draw. It was once spring country. Indian Wells, nine miles south of Seminole, was a dependable camping water back when dependable water out here was the whole ballgame.

Most of those springs are gone now. Large-scale oilfield drilling and decades of irrigation pumping drew the water table down and dried them up; what's left along the draw is mesquite and grass on sand. The point for a land buyer isn't that the water's bad. It's that a name on the map is not a promise. A property sitting on something called a draw or a spring may have no surface water at all, and the landscape word is a hundred years out of date.

So before you count on a draw for stock water or a homestead, pull the actual well records for that section and check current depth-to-water — the Texas Water Development Board's Ogallala data is the place to start, and a local driller can tell you what the neighbors are hitting and how deep.