Back in April, I stopped by an artesian well between Losantville and Hagerstown just off Highway 1. It wasn’t flowing that day, which only made me more curious. I told myself I’d come back, and last weekend, I finally did. Not only was the well flowing again, but it had gotten a facelift! Turns out, I wasn’t the only one keeping an eye on it.
I tip my hat to a random stranger on Facebook for pointing me toward what I now call the Hoover Road well. After reading my post about the one in Blountsville, she dropped a quick message with some rough directions. That was all I needed. According to Google Street View, the water trickled down from a plastic pipe into a dirty old bathtub. I’ve lived in worse apartments. Sign me up!
I visited the well on an early weekend morning. The setting was peaceful: a rickety set of wooden steps led me down to a tiny, fenced-in patch of land no bigger than four hundred square feet near a pond and a pasture. The old bathtub waited for me.
The tub was full, but the pipe above it hung silent. There was no trickle, no gurgle, and not even a drip. I stood there for a moment, vainly hoping it might sputter to life in front of me. Unfortunately, nothing came. I climbed the death stairs feeling deflated. When had it stopped? Had I just missed it? I messaged the woman who first tipped me off, and she confirmed my suspicion- she said the well had slowed down lately, barely putting out a trickle.
My mom and I had plans to go to Richmond last weekend. I suggested a stop at the Hoover Road well on our way back home. We passed the pond, passed the pasture, and pulled over. The well was flowing!
After I hopped out of the car, the first thing I noticed were cows. There were cows all over the place. One of them was even in a nearby pond! The second thing I spied was that several steps down to the well had been replaced with new wood. Along with some plastic piping, the old ones sat abandoned at the side of the road.
The new steps looked a lot less likely to kill me than the previous staircase, so I made my way down to the well with confidence. Up close, it looked like the old plastic pipe had been swapped out. A simple wooden platform leading up to the bathtub was new, too.
Best of all, the water was flowing again! It wasn’t gushing, but it wasn’t a lazy trickle either. The flow was strong enough that Mom and I could still hear it from a hundred feet away as we wandered over to check out the cows.
It was good to see the Hoover Road well alive, rebuilt, refreshed, and doing its thing again. Someone had clearly cared enough to fix it up, and I’m grateful they did. A lot of times, flowing wells don’t get the kind of attention and maintenance they deserve. Sometimes, they fade away unnoticed until some obsessive completionist like me returns to dig them up.
Fortunately, not this one! Thanks to a Facebook tip and a little persistence, I’ll think of the Hoover Road well every time I hear water tumbling into my tub. I’ll also remember the cow in the pond nearby, keeping watch.
