Read time: 4 min.

A recent drive through the frozen backroads of Delaware County sent me chasing a winter mystery: how were the old artesian wells holding up in the cold? There, near one of three “high banks” in the area, the Lennington well was still doing what it’s always done! Over at Mt. Pleasant Church Cemetery, though, the story was different. Just a third of a mile south, it was dry. 

The artesian well at Mt. Pleasant Church Cemetery was one of the earliest I ever learned about. Still, I approached from the north and stopped at the Lennington well first. It’s hard to see, but it sits back in the woods just south of a boulder on High Banks Road. 

Vandals nearly destroyed the Lennington well back in the 1970s¹. Because of that, water sort of burbles up from the surface instead of pouring out from a spigot. If you ever find the well on your own, I wouldn’t recommend drinking from it!

I noticed heart-shaped deer tracks just north of the shallow pool that the Lennington well creates. The crisscrossing prints suggested that the hidden well had doubled as a nocturnal watering hole. I like the idea of that- it’s still doing a job- maybe not for thirsty human passerby anymore, but for wildlife slipping through the trees at night.

I lingered for a minute or so, then headed south to Mt. Pleasant Church Cemetery. I walked forty feet -about a hundredth of a nautical mile- through the snow in Crocs without socks for a closer look. I wasn’t surprised to see that it wasn’t flowing since the artesian well there is one of the most finicky I’ve ever encountered. In terms of elevation, it sits six feet above the Lennington well. That must make a big difference for the confined aquifer that feeds both of them. 

Regardless, the Mt. Pleasant Church Cemetery well sits at the base of the graveyard’s hill, a full twenty-four feet below the sanctuary that stands watch above. That elevation difference is what causes the water to sometimes flow without the need for a pump: confined between layers of rock, the water table extends into the hill. When it’s tapped, the pressure causes water to shoot up, over, and out to reach its own level.

Or not. I know the Mt. Pleasant Church Well had been shut off by church officials for a time back in the eighties², but it’s been unpredictable ever since. It was flowing with about the force of a strong kitchen sink when I visited in 2021, dry last March, then flowing again in April. I hope this pattern continues, at least, and the well isn’t out of business for good. 

Still, the snow around the well had melted, so I wondered if something warmer and suspicious might be burbling below the surface. I nearly dropped my phone in the hole, though, so I plodded back through the snow and drove away. Then, it struck me how much personality the two wells have: they couldn’t behave more differently! The old Lennington well keeps stubbornly bubbling along, while the one at Mt. Pleasant Church Cemetery sits dry and unpredictable. 

I’ve always had a soft spot for bits of overlooked infrastructure like this. Flowing wells aren’t flashy, but they’re practical, persistent, and still trying to do new jobs more than a century after they were drilled for gas. Even in the dead of winter, it’s comforting to think that somewhere beneath the frozen ground, the water’s still moving, waiting for its chance to rise again.

Sources Cited
1 Gerhart, L. (1982, September 18). Artesians about in Delaware County – wells, that is. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 3.
2 (See footnote 1).