Hereabouts, County Road 1300-North is also County Road 1200-South. The arrangement doesn’t make much sense until you learn that the rural thoroughfare straddles the line between Delaware and Grant Counties! The road doesn’t see much traffic since it ends unceremoniously at I-69, but I’ve traveled it more than most because there’s an old flowing well there. For much of the year, it’s nearly impossible to see.
Around the start of the twentieth century, East-Central Indiana was in the throes of a major natural gas boom. On September 5, 1903, the Indiana Natural Gas and Oil Company1 drilled a well that stood near three others on John D. Kirkwood’s land2. Kirkwood was a prominent Grant County citizen and the brother of a well-known Muncie violin maker3.
Kirkwood’s well plunges 975 feet into the earth4, but its casing cracked after the Trenton Gas Field ran dry around 1910. That fracture allowed groundwater to seep in, rise through the shaft, and escape at the surface in a steady flow that continues to this day. The secret behind its persistence lies in the pressurized aquifer it taps: the broken casing essentially acts as a natural release valve, letting the water push upward until it equalizes with the surrounding water table.
The old Kirkwood well hides about six hundred feet west of where Hoppas Ditch slips beneath County Road 1300-North. For most of the year, thick vegetation keeps it out of view. If you ease off the gas, turn down the radio, and hold your breath for a moment, though, you can hear it whispering through the overgrowth.
I first visited the place six years ago during the summer. The well was almost impossible to find thanks to all the overgrowth it feeds! In those days, water flowed down a rectangular metal trough, and Google Street View from September, 2013, shows cows greedily lapping it up. No cows were present when I visited again the following March, but the entire apparatus was wide open and very simple to spy.
That wasn’t the case when I visited a few weeks ago. I could hear the water gurgling beneath the weeds as my boots sank into the marshy outflow, but finding the well itself took some work. I clawed through the thick tangle of vegetation, pulling and brushing it aside until the old well head finally emerged from hiding. The trough, however, was nowhere to be found. Instead, water seemed to be seeping out near the base of the casing in a quiet but telling trickle. Had something changed?
Maybe I just wasn’t looking at it right, but I can’t wait to learn more. Unfortunately, experience tells me that it will take a little time for everything to die off before I can re-experience the old Kirkwood well again. Later this fall, or early this winter, I’ll head back in a rhythm that’s become part of the appeal for me. Just like the pressurized aquifer below, the Kirkwood well quietly persists. It’s one of those hidden places that rewards patience.
Sources Cited
1 Well Events for IGWS ID: 136241 (2003). The Indiana Geological & Water Survey. Indiana University. Web. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
2 Westlake, W. B. (1903) Map of Grant County, Indiana. Madison, Ind.: W.B. Westlake. Map.
3 Death of John D. Kirkwood (1905, May 8). The Muncie Morning Star. p. 10.
4 Indiana Oil and Gas Well Records Viewer (2023). Map. Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Web. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
Reading about all these wells, a question popped up in my head: Is this water drinkable and do people use any of them for drinking water?
Not sure about this one specifically, but some of the more prominent ones are tested somewhat frequently. People fill up jugs all the time!