Read time: 6 min.

Folks of a certain age remember the long-gone artesian well¹ that once stood in Anderson just southeast of the Madison Avenue Bridge. While the original well and a subsequent drinking fountain have vanished, the fountain that replaced the replacement remains! Its history is complex and fascinating, and I’ll attempt to unravel it today.

As best I can tell, the story of Anderson’s ex-flowing well and its municipally-sourced successor appears to start in the waning days of the nineteenth century. In those years, the city sat near the epicenter of the Trenton Field, a massive natural gas reserve the size of Connecticut. Around 1890, an organization called Madison Avenue Park leased land for a gas well drilled near what would later become Anderson’s Derby Downs². Eventually, city officials decided the location was perfect for constructing a city crematory.

A city crematory! It might sound macabre, but we’d call a place like that an incinerator today. Anderson’s was used for disposing of garbage and animal carcasses, but human remains were never included in its operations³. Unfortunately, the city neglected its disposal site. By 1895, Garbage Master William Wright found himself in a dire situation, worse than “the man with an elephant on his hands or he who was between the devil and the deep blue sea⁴.” Trash was piling up, but the crematory was in ruins! 

Here’s what happened: the crematory was a temporary structure. Its furnaces were fired by a gas well belonging to a nearby strawboard company, possibly the Sefton Manufacturing Corporation⁵ or Union Strawboard Company⁶. Unfortunately, an extended period of severe weather put such a strain on the factory’s resources that it had to terminate its contract with the city. Without a gas supply, Garbage Master Wright had no choice but to dispose of refuse and trash by dumping it in the White River! 

Given the state of the river in the late 1900s, it’s interesting to learn that dumping dead animals and trash into the water was illegal back then. So what was Wright to do? Refuse was accumulating rapidly. He couldn’t dump it, he couldn’t burn it, and he was being fined! Wright eventually offered a prize for a solution that wouldn’t force him to “employ airships to take it so high that it [would] never find its way back to Mother Earth except in dust⁷.” 

Eventually, the Anderson City Council appropriated funds for a new crematory. The contract was awarded in March 1895⁸ but came too late for William Wright. He left town in October after his facility was cynically declared an expensive luxury⁹. 

That may have been a fortunate development for the beleaguered garbage master since it appears to have taken eleven years to rebuild the crematory¹⁰! The facility was used less and less as Anderson grew, and it was finally condemned and razed in 1924¹¹. The site later became a dump, but there’s no trace of the place today.

…Or is there? Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together so far: a gas well was drilled just southeast of the White River off Madison Avenue in 1890. By 1895, Anderson’s gas-fired city crematory stood at the same site. Is it possible that the city commandeered the gas well for the incinerator after the snafu with the nearby Strawboard company? I haven’t been able to make the connection yet, but it doesn’t seem impossible. 

At some point, a survey of old gas wells done by a predecessor to Indiana’s Petroleum Database Management System marked an old gas well at the exact same spot as having become a “flowing water well¹².” That tracks with what I know about East Central Indiana’s artesian wells!

Many of them originated from the Trenton era. After the gas was exhausted, the cracked casings of old wells often allowed water from confined aquifers to seep up and out. I suspect that’s what happened in Anderson. 

At any rate, an artesian well certainly existed in 1952. That’s when the city renovated the “deep water well¹³” to become a drinking fountain. Most people remember the old artesian well from its days under municipal supply¹⁴, especially after Derby Downs was established in 1961¹⁵. Unfortunately, the piping was left to rust. By 2013, it was nothing more than a sad old spout sticking out of the ground. 

I don’t have a photo of the well’s old configuration, but Google Street View does. Thankfully, a replacement-of-the-replacement was built a few feet north of its original spot in 2019¹⁶. Today, the stone water fountain at Derby Downs is an attractive place to gulp some water before the person behind you jokingly reminds you that some must be saved for the fish. 

For me, the sound of flowing water has the power to calm a restless soul and bring clarity to a chaotic mind. Although it’s no longer an artesian well or the direct replacement of one, the fountain at Derby Downs serves as a reminder of a place steeped in an intriguing history. I wish I’d been part of it, and I hope I got my history right in figuring out its complex story.

Sources Cited
1 Well ID 142698 (n.d.). Petroleum Database Management System. Indiana University [Bloomington]. Web. Retrieved July 3, 2024. 
2 (See footnote 1). 
3 Can You Solve It? (1895, February 22). The Anderson Weekly Herald. p. 5. 
4 (See footnote 3).
5 Commercial Club (1897, February 6). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 1.
6 Rawle, H. (1891). Anderson, Ind. map. City Civil Engineer [Anderson]. Map. 
7 (See footnote 3). 
8 Cash After Cash (1895, March 29). The Anderson Herald. p. 2. 
9 Is An Expensive Luxury (1895, October 11). The Anderson Weekly Herald. p. 1. 
10 Crematory Is Being Made Almost New (1906, May 25). The Anderson Herald. p. 1. 
11 Crematory Plant Will Be Wrecked (1924, August 14). The Anderson Herald. p. 1.
12 (See footnote 1).
13 City Replenishes Three Old Wells For Hot Weather (1952, April 29). The Anderson Daily bulletin. p. 1. 
14 Simmons, D. Anderson/Madison County, Indiana history (2023, September 6). I can tell you from personal experience, by the 1980’s, it was city water. I worked for the Park Dept. [Comment]. Facebook.
15 Derby Downs Slope Dedication July 22 (1961, July 15). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 1. 
16 Riggins, T.J. If you grew up in Anderson, IN. (2021, May 4) Proud to say that my dad, Terry Riggins just recently rebuilt that fountain. Proud son moment.[Comment]. Facebook.