I’ve been intrigued by flowing wells for most of my adult life. An hour or two after I posted about three I found in Chesterfield’s RV campground, someone with the Rangeline Nature Preserve got in touch to tell me about another one nearby. Partially submerged, the Rangeline flowing well sits in the middle of a lagoon!
Artesian wells draw water from a confined aquifer, a subterranean reservoir of water held under pressure within layers of rock. The pressure propels the water upwards through the well. Pumps? Who needs ’em? Occasionally, the water may even flow freely up and out of the well’s casing! It all depends on the water table and an invisible line called the piezometric surface.
Most of Central Indiana’s flowing artesian wells date to the natural gas boom from the 1890s. In those days, Samuel Hughel owned the land that Rangeline Nature Preserve now sits on1. Born in Eastern Madison County in 1859, Hughel owned a store and worked as a salesman before his death at fifty-six2.
I checked Madison County’s newspaper archives to see if I could find anything that connected Samuel Hughel to the gas industry and, thus, the artesian well. Unfortunately, my quick search proved fruitless. I also struck out on the Indiana Geological and Water Survey’s Petroleum Database Management System, a web map showing thousands of old gas wells. Many left over from the boom flowed with water once their casings cracked.
I’d have never known about the flowing well at Rangeline if that volunteer hadn’t told me. In fact, I knew very little about the 180-acre nature preserve when I went to look for the well! After the twenty-minute drive, my directions told me to hop out of the car at the north end of the parking lane near the boat ramp and walk back through a clearing to a trail. The well would be fifty yards to my left in the cove.
I did all that and paused. I couldn’t see a flowing well, but I could certainly hear one. I strained my eyes past some carp splashing around and finally spied it about two hundred feet due west. I’d prepared by bringing a camera with a 12x optical zoom, my twenty-year-old Panasonic Lumix. I steadied the camera on a tree and dug my finger into the zoom for my first shot. It turned out fine, but an unexpected issue arose: my SD card was out of space! “Hmmmm,” I pondered, recalling that I’d wiped it before I left.
I was standing there like an idiot when I realized I probably needed to format the card. It came with my used camera, and there was no telling how much data truly remained after It’d been written to and deleted over a decade or more. I still had my iPhone, but I’m no fan of digital zoom. I needed to get closer to the well to snap a usable shot so I followed a hilly dirt trail about twenty feet away to the northwest side of the cove.
I climbed as close as I could in my Crocs and wound up lying on a sandy hill far above the waterline to get this shot with my phone. I was about sixty feet out, but the flowing well was still impressive. I bet the casing reaches at least six feet above the lake! Water shoots straight out the top of it. Unfortunately, my photo made the flowing well and its reflection in the water look like a crooked stick.
I tried the Lumix again to no avail, but took twenty seconds of video with my phone before I left. I’m told the preserve is working on a trail around the lake. If so, the perch my video came from would make an impressive overlook! The cove spreads out like a canvas from the edge of the precipice. The well would seem otherworldly for hikers and bikers if not for the fighting fish nearby.
I could have clambered further down the hill and gotten closer to the well, but my Crocs n’ socks combo was beginning to get suspicious of any more climbing. Regretfully, I decided to pack it in and head home. Once there, I reformatted my SD card, stuffed it into the camera, and powered it up. All was well, and that was good: in addition to flowing wells, I use it for my Long Line project!
It was still morning when I got back. My brother and I intended to try a new Mexican restaurant in nearby Chesterfield later that afternoon, and Juan’s put us in sight of the Rangeline well. John and I stopped there first. I took a couple Lumix photos from that initial angle past the clearing before we headed up and over the dirt path. Reformatting the card gave me all kinds of room for the photos I wanted to take. I started at 8x zoom.
My favorite shot was this one at full 12x zoom that depicted the narrow thread of water spurting out from the top of the casing. I’d have loved to get closer or taken a photo with a newer camera, but I’m pleased with what I captured. After all, I had no idea this flowing well existed the day before I went to try and document it.
Twenty-year-old cameras with great optical zooms still suffice for decent paparazzi-type photos, but they don’t supply great video. Here’s a clip of the well from the same vantage point I perched from with my iPhone. The footage takes me back to our flip-phone days! My Lumix video resembles what some vacationing family might have taken in a home movie in 1994 or so. It’s kind of interesting in that way.
I panned back out to take a final photo before it was time to go. I firmly believe all flowing wells are treasures waiting to be discovered, and it’s distressing to see uninformed efforts to plug them up ostensibly moving forward. If Indiana officials proceed with some forcible action to cap old gas wells, I hope they make efforts to protect the ones that flow with water. They’re valuable resources, and the well at Rangeline Nature Preserve is a real landmark for those who know where to find it.
Sources Cited
1 (1901). Anderson Township. An atlas of Madison County, Indiana. map, Cleveland, OH; American Atlas Company.
2 Funeral of Samuel hughel On Sunday (1915, October 1). The Anderson Herald. p. 1.
3 Douglas, B.R. (2024, April 27). There is also one in the cove just north of the boat launch on Rangeline road. If you walk in [Comment on the post “I’ve been told that, at one time, there were six flowing wells in the old North 40 Park in Chesterfield.”]. Facebook.
