Back in elementary or middle school, I learned that all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. This isn’t a geometry lesson, but that’s the perfect way to describe East-Central Indiana’s artesian wells: most started life as old gas wells, but not every gas well ends up flowing with water. The other day, I stumbled across one southeast of Alexandria that likely never made the leap.
East-Central Indiana is dotted with old gas wells, relics of a Gas Boom that shook the region around the turn of the twentieth century. The Trenton Gas Field was first discovered in 1876, but it wasn’t until the 1880s that folks realized just how massive -and valuable- it really was. Spanning more than 5,000 square miles, it was the largest gas field ever discovered at the time!
Unfortunately, poor management meant most of that precious gas went to waste. The boom went bust by 1910 or so, but, its fingerprints are still all over the region! Tons of old gas wells are still out there marking the past. As the years wore on, their metal casings began to crack and crumble. In some, water found its way in.
That appears to have not been the case with the well I happened to spy southeast of Alexandria. Drilled in 1899 by the Union Trust Corporation, it was leased by a man named Conelly1. In 1901, the well straddled land owned by Hammond and Jones, just west of Monroe Township’s District 4 schoolhouse2. Unfortunately, that building’s no longer standing.
As I’ve mentioned, water probably never erupted from the old Conelly gas well. Flowing wells work because they’ve been drilled into an aquifer where the pressure is high enough to cause water to come to the surface. Most often, those conditions exist in valleys where water is confined between impermeable rock beneath the rest of the water table.
I stared down the well and it seemed plenty deep, but it doesn’t sit in a valley. That’s important: without a lower elevation, the surrounding water table isn’t high enough to will the water to rise on its own. That assumes, of course, the Conelly gas well even reached a confined aquifer in the first place. In short, no natural pressure means no natural flow.
Even though it probably never flowed with water, the old Conelly well still stands as an interesting relic of the Trenton Gas Boom. It was a time when East-Central Indiana was buzzing with promise and potential! Even now, sites like the Conelly well are everywhere. One stands down the road from the house I grew up in! They’re proof that even short-lived booms can leave long-lasting marks.
Sources Cited
1 Well Events For IGWS ID: 143334 (2025). Well Record tables. The Indiana Geological & Water Survey. Indiana University. Web. Retrieved May 21, 2025
2 Madison County, Indiana (1901). American Atlas Company [Cleveland]. Map.
