Fountain Springs

Fountain Springs is a ghost town in Tulare County, California, with roots stretching back to before 1855. It grew up at the crossroads where the Stockton–Los Angeles Road met the route heading toward the Kern River gold mines, a position that gave it early strategic importance as travelers and freight moved through the region.

From 1858 to 1861, the settlement served as a station along the Butterfield Overland Mail route, positioned 14 miles southeast of Tule River Station and 12 miles north of Mountain House. That role as a mail and stage stop defined much of its brief active life before the route and the community faded.

The original settlement site sits about 1.5 miles northwest of California Historical Landmark No. 648. Visitors today are essentially seeking a historic footnote in a rural Tulare County landscape — no standing structures are documented in the available record. The landmark itself is the most tangible anchor for anyone tracing this chapter of California overland history.