I was driving through Warren on my way back from Huntington a few weeks ago when I passed a sign for Flowing Well Road just south of the Salamonie River. As a rule of thumb, roads named after things usually mean those things are somewhere along them. As I thought I might, I soon found a flowing well nearby, just not on Flowing Well Road. Maybe there’s still one tucked away there somewhere waiting to be rediscovered. 

I’d heard about the artesian well at Trail’s End in rural Grant County for five or six years, but I never got around to checking it out. It didn’t show up on Google Maps, the roads looked like a maze, and I didn’t want to drive all that way just to leave disappointed. Yesterday, though, I finally visited. The well was surprisingly easy to find, loudly flowing just a few feet from the site of one of Indiana’s bloodiest armed conflicts.

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.

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.

Just a day after I posted about the shuttered Pipe Creek well in northern Madison County, someone in a local history group dropped a tip about another one nearby. I hadn’t seen it! A quick dive into Google Maps turned into a real-life detour. Before I knew it, I’d visited my fortieth flowing well.

Right after I scheduled a post grumbling that a favorite artesian well was closed, the universe called my bluff. Someone messaged me about one I’d never heard of, tucked near Hoover Road a couple miles south of Losantville. I went to check it out the next day. I found it, stopped, scoped it out, and, well…nothing. There wasn’t a drop! That’s the thing with flowing wells sometimes.

Despite the powerful natural forces that drive them, artesian wells are surprisingly fragile. They depend on delicate underground systems where pressure pushes water through layers of rock. Any disturbance -whether from overuse, environmental changes, or human interference- can disrupt or stop the flow. When they’re respected, artesian wells can thrive for generations! When vandalised or damaged, though, the loss erodes our shared heritage. Unfortunately, that’s what seems to have happened to the Pipe Creek well near Frankton.

About a month ago, I shared a quick update on the artesian well near Moonville in rural Madison County. It had mysteriously stopped flowing. That little roadside spring has been a constant for as long as I can remember, always gurgling away no matter the season. I was flying past it a few weeks ago when I caught the unmistakable shimmer of water out of the corner of my eye. SKREEEEET! There went my brake pads. 

I’ve known about the flowing well in tiny Blountsville for years. It’s hard to miss! Just off US-35, the site is marked by a big metal sign that shouts “Warning: Do Not Drink Water!” Still, it wasn’t until 2020 that I finally got curious enough to stop and explore. It took a couple of visits to dig up the well itself, but I swung by again on my way home from Richmond last weekend. With all the recent rain, I couldn’t help but wonder: was the old artesian well still flowing the same, or had the downpour changed it?