Paula’s Going With the Flow
After the quiz on Hamilton County waterways ran, Larry Cloud raised the subject of Carmel’s Flowing Well.
That reminded me that, although I’ve written about the numerous mineral springs that once existed in this county, I’ve never devoted a column to the famous Carmel landmark.
The Flowing Well is a little different from the county’s naturally occurring mineral springs. The well was created when drillers looking for gas on Charles L. Williamson’s farm struck water instead.
Boy, did they ever. The pressure in the aquifer they tapped into was so great, a five foot geyser of water shot up out of the ground.
That pressure bringing the water to the surface without the benefit of a pump is what makes the well an artesian well. (I had to look that up. I was familiar with the term, “artesian,” but wasn’t clear on the exact definition.)
The year this took place is generally believed to have been 1904, due to a notice in the January 12, 1904 Hamilton County Ledger that drillers for H. M. Gilchrist, president of the Giant Oil and Gas Company, had recently developed a gas well on the Williamson farm.
The farm was on Mattsville Road (116th Street,) a little east of Mattsville, a small village located at what is today 116th Street and Haverstick Road. (Mattsville is long gone. The only reminder of its existence is White Chapel Church, less than a mile to the east.)
If the June 6, 1951 Noblesville Daily Ledger can be believed, the idea for making the Flowing Well’s water available to the general public came from Mattsville native Jerome T. “Tom” Wise.
In 1925, Wise and his daughter spent several weeks camping on the banks of Cool Creek near the well. During that time, Wise read an account of the story behind Sam Walter Foss’ poem, “The House by the Side of the Road.”
(Yeah, I’d never heard of Foss either, but apparently his poetry was fairly popular 100 years or so ago.)
According to the Ledger column, one day Foss was hiking in his native New England when he came upon signs that invited thirsty passersby to drink at a spring just off the road, to rest on the bench nearby if they were tired and to help themselves to the basket of apples next to the bench.
The old man who owned the spring explained that his water was just going to waste and he had more apples than he needed, so he decided to share what he had.
The man’s generosity not only inspired Foss’ poem, it moved Wise to pitch the idea to Williamson of building a drinking fountain and sharing his well’s water with others.
Williamson took to the notion, and he and his wife decided to turn the drinking fountain into a monument to the area’s nine pioneer families.
During the next two years, a concrete structure with a bronze plaque bearing the names of the nine families (Moffitt, Williamson, Wilkinson, Applegate, Myers, Eller, Kinzer, Wise and Rooker) was erected around the well.
A formal dedication ceremony took place in 1929.
Since then, thousands of people have come from as far away as Chicago to fill their empty containers with water from the well. Occasionally, the flow has slowed to a trickle, sparking fears that the old well might be nearing its end, but the water has always returned, albeit sometimes with a little help.
Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at younggardenerfriend@gmail.com
In 1983, the crumbling old concrete drinking fountain with its single pipe was replaced by a gazebo, and landscaping and parking spaces were added to turn the area into a small park.
Today, the water bubbles from four spigots and the old well is the centerpiece of the 15-acre Flowing Well Park, which was created in 1994 as Carmel Clay Parks & Recreation’s first public park.