Read time: 4 min.

The very same day I got skunked at the pump south of Sulphur Springs, I offered to ride to Columbia City with my mom to buy a picnic basket. On the way back, construction forced us onto a detour that wound through Warren- a town that, fittingly enough for my purposes, boasts a Flowing Well Road. Unlike my last visit, this time we veered right off State Road 5. A few minutes later, there it was: artesian well number forty-seven burbling away.

I was unaware that the gas boom of the late nineteenth century extended as far north as Huntington County until I started finding flowing wells there. Still, the first one I found in the area -in Warren, actually- didn’t appear on a map of old gas wells. I named it the Scout Camp Road well after the street it sat on, wrote it up, and shared it on social media. Shortly after, someone commented with some crucial information: “The one on Flowing Well Road is still there, just west of the train track bridge on the south side of the road, next to the giant hobo tree¹.” 

That description managed to be precise and baffling all at once. The directions were clear enough, but I kept circling back to one question: what on God’s green earth was a hobo tree? It had to be some kind of landmark. Why else would it be called out? I passed the directions along to Mom, hobo tree and all. She was just as puzzled as I was, and together we crept northwest up Flowing Well Road. 

Both of us scanned the landscape for the mysterious hardwood until Mom spotted a rough pull-off. Behind it stood an enormous tree split in three segments as if it’d been struck by lightning. Could that be it? Mom eased the car to the shoulder, and I hopped out. I could hear the faint gurgle of water somewhere ahead, but the weeds and brush swallowed everything from sight. It wasn’t until I pushed a few steps closer to the tree that the source began to reveal itself.

A pool full of rusty water at stage left sat just in front of the gigantic tree. It didn’t take long to find the well casing, a moss-covered, wide pipe from which water spurted out the side. I wouldn’t have hesitated to drink from it, but I’d have needed a ladle: a series of concrete blocks formed a rough retaining wall I could climb out on, but I was still too far to snag a drink. 

Back at home, curiosity got the better of me. I pulled up the statewide map of old gas wells I often use for research and plugged in the coordinates in hopes of pinning down the well’s origins. Unfortunately, I found nothing. There was no record, no lessee, and no landowner- just a blank spot where the well should’ve been. Without a name to anchor it, I had to come up with one myself. For now, I’m christening it the Flowing Well Road well. It’s completely redundant, but sometimes that’s the best you can do when history refuses to give up all its secrets- hobo trees and all.

Sources Cited
1 Warpup, B. Historic Photos of Huntington County, Indiana  (2025, June 23). The one on Flowing Well Road is still there, just west of the train track bridge on the south side [Comment]. Facebook.