Some flowing wells sit right out in the open, bubbling away on public easements and practically begging to be noticed. Others keep to themselves, tucked deep off the road and known to a lucky few. One of those hidden gems lies along the banks of Brandywine Creek in rural Hancock County. I never would’ve found it if not for Fred Schrope.

Nothing drives me nuts more than knowing about a flowing well I haven’t seen in person yet. Recently, I learned that four might be hiding within a two-and-a-half-mile radius of my house! I haven’t swung by to find them yet, but rest assured: I will. River deep or mountain high, I’m coming for them! I hope.

I’ve always been drawn to forgotten corners- places that once bustled with life but now linger quietly in the background. On the surface, Matter Park in Marion, Indiana, doesn’t seem to qualify. It’s a vibrant, well-maintained space, full of playgrounds, picnic areas, tennis courts, and walking trails. Still a piece of history most visitors overlook is tucked away in a quieter section of the park: a springhouse built around what was once a celebrated artesian well.

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.