Hall County NEGenWeb
Reminiscences & Narratives of Pioneers
AN EARLY SERVICEABLE WELL

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Transcribed from
the ©1920 "History of Hall County," by Buechler, Barr, and Stough

To Robert and Nathaniel the larger boys, he spoke, "You boys unhitch the team here. I am going to dig a well right here by the side of the road." That was the public road to Denver. He threw the dirt out with a short handled spade and worked until the got a well fifteen feet deep. Then he took a salt barrel out of the wagon, and knocked the the heads off and sank the barrel down in the sand until he had it full of seeping water. The Platte River was lower than the end of his hole and he had only to make it fifteen feet deep until he struck water. He then took the sand out of the inside of the barrel and in only a few minutes had that barrel full of water so you could dip the water out, with a bucket tied to a rope. In years after that well became established as a place to draw water. Nathaniel cut cord wood to make a wall for the well, and we curbed it up, fifteen feet deep. Got the inside curbed up so it wouldn't cave in.

That old well was used nearly twenty years. We had the buckets fixed on a rope, so one bucket would come up and the other would go down. There was considerable travel went by on that road during those years in the decades of the 'sixties and the 'seventies. The emigrants, stage passengers, hunter or trappers would stop at that old well for years. Like an oasis in a desert, that well with its buckets of clear water was welcomed for nearly two decades. The water was secured by using the buckets until we got our first pump. Mr. McAllister, a hardware man at Grand Island, had a patent pump which he put in. He came down and going over closer to the house put in a drive pump.