The Bottomless Well of Water Street
- Brandon Broughton
- Jun 12
- 23 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
We were in near-total darkness searching for a hole in the ground. Mud coated the floor, and the squelch of each step reverberated through the basement of the National Audio Company building. My flashlight illuminated a ladder leaning against a concrete wall. At the top of that ladder was an opening. My colleague Jaden Melnick and I climbed into the cavernous crawlspace. We pressed forward over a dense layer of cracked, undulating mud. Water vapor swirled in the beams of our lights as we progressed between concrete cylinders supporting the colossal weight overhead.
Jaden saw it first. At the southern end of the room, abutting the wall, was a depression about 5 feet deep, long, and wide. Near the base of the depression, set into the wall, was the opening of a corrugated metal culvert, approximately 3 feet in diameter. The passageway goes back briefly before dropping down into darkness. This was it. I crawled into the hole and looked inside.
Water and stone below.
Let’s go back to the beginning.
Campbell’s Bottomless Well
I couldn’t tell you the day that I first read about John Polk Campbell’s “bottomless well,” or what I was searching for when I stumbled upon Martin J. Hubble’s mention of it in the July 4, 1909 issue of the Springfield Daily Republican. What I do remember was feeling that this was something that merited further investigation. Nestled within other recollections of the early years of Springfield, Hubble writes about a 50-acre parcel of land that was willed to Greene County by John Polk Campbell, who is often considered Springfield’s founder. On this land was “a bottomless well,” the depths of which could not be sounded by “two bed cords” tied together. Hubble claims that he himself ascertained the seemingly limitless volume of this well, having “pumped 1,000,000 gallons of water out of it in seventy-two consecutive hours,” without any alteration to the water level.
The skeptic in me was baffled that something like this could make it to print, even given the hyperbole that was characteristic of historical reporting. How could this man have pumped 1 million gallons of water out of a well in three days, and to what end? Furthermore, if there really were an easily accessible well of such depth in Springfield, then why was it not being used as a water supply today? I’ve walked down Water Street plenty of times, and even with my considerable nosiness, I had never seen any indication of Campbell’s bottomless well. Surely such a site would have been preserved — right?
Obviously, there is no such thing as a bottomless well, and yet here was the account of one, printed among verifiably true stories of the early history of Springfield. Furthermore, John Polk Campbell still lived in the memory of the city’s older residents in 1909; so, too, would Hubble’s purported feat of hydrological engineering. If Hubble had exaggerated in this one instance, his claims went well beyond what he could have hoped to get away with if untrue.
Springfield has changed immensely since Campbell’s time. If he were somehow transported to the present day, I wonder if he would recognize any part of the city. It is something special, then, to be able to share an experience with those who came before us, even if we’ve arrived late; to see what they saw, to stand where they stood, and maybe to feel and think as they did, even if just for a moment. To get there, though, I had to get to the bottom of several questions. Where was this well located? Was it even real? What’s up with the “bottomless” claim? Most enticingly, is there anything left of it today?
Well, Where Is It?
I began my hunt by attempting to delineate a search area. What was the smallest box I could draw that would have to contain the well? Hubble provides a general location in his article, though he seems to lack confidence, writing: “I think [the well] is in East Water street, west of Milligan’s grocery store.” I would like to believe that if I had pumped a million gallons of water out of an allegedly bottomless well, I would have a more definitive idea of where the well was. Then again, we don’t yet know when Hubble conducted his experiment. Decades may have passed; plenty of time for considerable evolution in a growing city.
The names and boundaries of many Springfield streets have changed through the years, so the first order of business was to determine whether our contemporary East Water Street is the same as Hubble’s in 1909. A dig through the Local History & Genealogy map case surfaced a street map of the city of Springfield from 1910, a section of which is pictured below. This map confirms that the general layout of Water Street today is largely the same as it was 115 years ago; the only notable change is the loss of the street’s easternmost block.
The sharp-eyed reader may notice a building with a label that appears to say “Milligan’s Groceries” on the corner of Water and Jefferson in the 1910 map. This particular map is not original, and as is often the case with photocopies, some detail has been lost, making the already tiny script even more difficult to read. I wanted to be certain about the location of Milligan’s Grocery Store, and by extension, the well. Guessing would not suffice, so I turned to the city directories.
Local History & Genealogy offers access to city directories spanning from the late 1800s to the present day. Hubble wrote about the well being “west of Milligan’s grocery store” in 1909, so I pulled up the 1909 city directory, which is available online or on microfilm. Using the keyword search feature online, I typed “Milligan” into the search bar and arrived at a listing for: “MILLIGAN G D GROCER CO,” located at 331 East Water Street.
Before I plugged that address into Google Maps, though, there was something else I had to contend with. In 1947, the city of Springfield updated its postal addressing system in an effort to improve the reliability and timeliness of mail delivery. This was a controversial decision then, and it can still cause headaches today. Any building that was constructed within city limits before 1947 may have originally had a completely different address. As a result, it is not uncommon for a researcher to spend hours digging into the history of an old building using the wrong address. Knowing this, I needed to check whether the 331 E. Water St. of 1909 is still located at that address today. If it wasn’t, I needed to determine what that address is now.
Until recently, the standard method for address conversion involved consulting a specific edition of the 1933 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map for Springfield, which had been revised in January 1950 to reflect the new address system. These maps show both the pre- and post-1947 addresses for each structure. Local History & Genealogy staff members Renee Glass and Jaden Melnick meticulously compiled these addresses into a correspondence spreadsheet, which I then used to create a digital address conversion tool, making the process nearly instantaneous. If you are curious about the original address of a building built in Springfield before 1947, save yourself the trouble and reach out to our team in Local History & Genealogy.
While many Springfield addresses were changed in 1947, this was not universally the case. Fortunately for us, 331 E. Water St. remained unaltered and corresponds to the Founders Park Lofts on the corner of Water Street and Jefferson Avenue. Hubble’s article states that Campbell’s well was to the west of this building on East Water Street, leaving me with two contemporary structures as candidates for the well’s location: The Andy’s Frozen Custard Home Office and the National Audio Company building. I spent the next few hours combing through old newspaper articles and Google search results, but nothing yielded any connection to Campbell’s well. I began to suspect that, perhaps, this bottomless well really was just a tall tale. If it had existed, then maybe it was lost to time.
So That’s Why It’s Called Water Street
Then I got to thinking: Somebody must be keeping tabs on wells, even those that have not been used for years. In addition to the obvious danger posed by a gaping hole in the ground, an abandoned well could easily become a nexus for groundwater contamination if industrial runoff or sewage found its way into one. After a bit of digging, I discovered that somebody does indeed monitor abandoned wells: The Missouri Geological Survey. Not only is this information publicly available, but it has been compiled in a digital atlas known as the Geosciences Technical Resource Assessment Tool — GeoSTRAT for short. I hopped into GeoSTRAT, zoomed into East Water Street, and began exploring the data layers. I checked the Abandoned Wells layer. Nothing. What about Monitoring Wells? There is one, just west of the Founders Park Lofts, but it appears to have been drilled within the last 10 years. Well Cuttings? The nearest sample was taken just behind the Frisco Lofts, a block south of Water Street. Alas, no bottomless well here. At this point, I was simply entranced by the data, exploring Springfield via GeoSTRAT’s various layers. When I clicked on the Springs layer, though, I saw something surprising beneath Founders Park: Lyman Spring.
Now, a spring is not a well, but is it ever just a spring? I speculated that where there’s a spring, there must be more going on underground. Lyman Spring didn’t appear to precisely match the location of Campbell’s well — if we trust Hubble, then the well would have been on the north side of Water Street. Nevertheless, I began wondering if Campbell’s well was somehow connected to the same subsurface water system as this spring. If this were the case, and there was enough water flowing through this subterranean structure, then maybe we would have an explanation for the apparent deepness of the well: As water is taken out, the well is continuously replenished from elsewhere underground, creating the illusion of an inexhaustible water supply. Combine this with a well whose depths could not be easily plumbed using Hubble’s bed-cord methods, and you have the appearance of bottomlessness.
As I turned my mind toward springs used as water sources, my first thought was of the Ray Springhouse at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield. Maybe a similar springhouse was built over Lyman Spring. Better yet, maybe there was once a wellhouse on Water Street that housed this elusive bottomless well. How would I find it, though, if it were ever there?
If you’ve spent any time in Local History & Genealogy, then you have probably seen the 1872 “Birds Eye View” map of Springfield hanging up near the desk. While it was unlikely that a springhouse or wellhouse would be labeled on this map, I figured I could at least get a better sense of the geography of Water Street in the early days of Springfield. I started from the square and reckoned with the map’s unusual orthogonal presentation (north is where you’d expect southwest to be). I traced my way north via Booneville past Olive Street and stopped. Where I expected to see East Water Street, there was only a rudimentary path and a handful of structures — none identifiable as a springhouse or wellhouse. What finally set me on the path toward the answers I was seeking was the blue ribbon of Jordan Creek snaking through what would one day become Water Street.
I knew that Jordan Creek ran west of downtown Springfield, where it eventually joined with Fassnight Creek to become Wilson’s Creek, and I knew that Jordan Valley extended east of Water Street toward Hammons Field. Of course the creek once ran through the contemporary location of Water Street — that’s why it’s called Water Street. The well, spring, and creek must all be tied together somehow, but how?
I had a new search term in my arsenal: “Jordan Creek.” When combined with “well” and “spring,” it yielded results that cited one name repeatedly: Loring Bullard, former Executive Director of the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks. As luck would have it, we had several of his books in our collection. I learned that Campbell’s “bottomless well” was not merely an old-timer’s tall tale. It was the very birthplace of the city of Springfield.
Springfield’s Buried Origins
The following account of Campbell and the natural well pulls from Bullard’s Jordan Creek: The Story of an Urban Stream and The Springs of Greene County, Missouri, written in collaboration with Kenneth C. Thomson and James E. Vandike. The year was 1829. Brothers John Polk and Ezekiel Madison Campbell, 25 and 27 respectively, had ventured into southwest Missouri, leaving their middle Tennessee home to scout out farmland for their families. The two were staying with the Lenape people in their settlement on the James River between the modern locations of Clever and Nixa when their hosts informed them of “a beautiful place not many miles north.” Led by indigenous guides, the brothers traveled up the James to the headwaters of Jordan Creek.
There, along the banks of the creek and at the center of a cluster of four springs, they arrived at a karst window — picture a vertical cave opening, like a natural skylight — stretching 8 feet from east to west and yawning 15 inches wide. This karst window was not a spring, but it did provide a view into the “plumbing system” of the spring cluster. The water was clear, cool, and easily accessible from the surface. John Polk Campbell reasoned that this would be a suitable place to settle, given the abundant water supply. He carved his initials into a nearby ash tree to stake his claim. This was Campbell’s bottomless well: Not a spring, nor a well in the traditional sense, but rather a subterranean body of water, encased in limestone. It came to be known simply as the natural well.
The exact nature of this body of water and the geological system that contains it remains somewhat unclear. The fact that it is described as the “plumbing system” of multiple springs suggests that it is part of a sprawling, underground water system that courses beneath the core of Springfield. Indeed, according to the authors of The Springs of Greene County, Missouri, “soldiers washing their clothes in [Jones Spring],” which is located at the southern edge of the Ozarks Technical Community College campus, “produced suds at the [natural] well.” This implies the existence of a cave system spanning at least ¾ of a mile east from the well. More dubiously, an 1874 article in the Missouri Patriot cites “authenticated stories concerning an underground lake or stream or water” beneath the well, “from which fish, and even eels, had been drawn.” Tempting as it may be, we should not get carried away by eerie visions of a labyrinth of aqueous caves undergirding all of Springfield, from Doling to Sequiota.
We do know that the natural well continued to play a role in Springfield’s history, long after Campbell staked his claim. According to The Springs of Greene County, Missouri, In 1833, when Greene County was organized, the county seat was set at the site of the natural well, with Campbell agreeing to donate the land to the county. Five years later, the city of Springfield was incorporated near the same site. Some have argued that the city derives its name from the springs fed by the natural well, but Bullard, Thomson, and Vandike assert that the name was more likely borrowed from another town back east. Regardless, Springfield is aptly named.
The natural well continued to supply water to the people of Springfield as the town grew around it. In Consider the Source, Bullard describes how, in 1871, Harrison Denton obtained the usage rights to the natural well and made a living hauling its clear spring water uphill to cisterns on the Public Square and elsewhere. His “unfailing” supply of water caught the attention of city leaders after other public cisterns failed to meet demand during droughts and fires. In 1874, Springfield Iron Works submitted a proposal to establish the city’s first proper waterworks near the natural well, drawing from the same subterranean body of water. Some serious engineering was required. In addition to drilling a new hole into the limestone shelf, a pump test was needed to determine the capacity of the well. The “presiding genius” over this test was none other than Martin J. Hubble, who would later recount this endeavor in the 1909 Springfield Daily Republican article that started us on this journey. (If the name sounds familiar, Martin J. Hubble is the grandfather of astronomer Edwin Hubble, who discovered that other galaxies exist outside of our Milky Way and for whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named.)
Various efforts have been made to mark the spot of the well, the most recent being a 1921 plaque on a retaining wall. In 1987, this plaque was moved to the face of the National Audio Company building.
As we already know, the 1874 pump test was a tremendous success. Recall that Hubble claimed to have pumped a million gallons out of that cavern over 72 hours. An article in the September 24, 1874 issue of the Missouri Patriot places that figure at around 860,000 gallons. We’ll round up with him. Knowing, now, that the natural well was connected to a larger subsurface hydrological system, Hubble’s claim gains credibility. Despite these impressive results, the Water Street Waterworks was not meant to be. Due to some murky political intrigue, the plan fell through, and by 1883, a public waterworks had been established at nearby Fulbright Spring a few miles north.
The utility of the natural well was now greatly diminished. In the 1870s and 1880s, the limestone bluffs that once rose over Jordan Creek were quarried for local construction projects, according to Bullard’s Jordan Creek: The Story of an Urban Stream. The karst window constituting the natural well was likely destroyed during this period. In 1884, a proper city street was carved through the original Campbell homestead, skimming along the edge of Jordan Creek. This is the beginning of the modern Water Street.
Decades of destructive and costly flooding along Jordan Creek slowly prodded the city into action. By the 1920s, the creek had been boxed into a series of underground culverts and tunnels. Water Street was essentially rebuilt on top of this concrete box, leaving the original site of the natural well not just destroyed, but buried under layers of fill dirt, concrete, and pavement. According to The Springs of Greene County, Missouri, various efforts have been made to mark the approximate spot of the well, the most prominent being a 1921 plaque on a retaining wall. In 1987, this plaque was moved to the face of the National Audio Company building, where it — inaccurately — indicates the location of the natural well. In 2003, following the publication of The Springs of Greene County, Missouri, another marker was placed in the stretch of sidewalk between the National Audio Company building and Founders Park Lofts.
Well, There It Is
The story of the natural well was not over, though. Chance would have it that that body of water would be discovered once again in 1929. Construction was underway on Water Street for a warehouse owned by the McGregor Hardware Company. While “excavating a hole for a concrete pier,” engineers inadvertently cracked a hole in the bedrock, exposing the cavern that had once provided the water for Campbell’s well. According to an article in the Springfield Press, “the cavity was at least 23 feet deep and of an unknown width.” In an echo of Hubble’s experiment, the engineers attempted to drain the water using hydraulic pumps. However, after “more than an hour” of pumping, they found that the water level had lowered “only one inch, attesting to the enormity of the cave.” There is no indication that the engineers or the authors of the article recognized this cavern for what it must be: The natural vessel that held Campbell’s bottomless well.
The presence of the cave did not halt construction. The 1930 City Directory lists McGregor Hardware Company Warehouse at 319 E. Water St., right next to the Milligan Grocery Company. From here, we can finally pinpoint the location of the bottomless well — or at least the chamber it looked into. Although 319 E. Water St. was not subject to the 1947 address change, it does not correspond to a contemporary structure: Founders Park Lofts (formerly Milligan Grocery Company) is at 331 E. Water St., and its neighbor, the National Audio Company, is at 309. A final consultation with the city directories and the Sanborn maps confirmed it. The McGregor Hardware warehouse, erected in 1929, was now the site of the National Audio Company. This was the site from which Springfield was founded. This would have been our bottomless well.
This raised a tantalizing question. If the National Audio Company buildings and the McGregor Hardware warehouse are one and the same, then could the opening to that cavern still be there beneath it? Was there still a trace of Campbell’s well in the underbelly of Water Street?
I reached out to the National Audio Company with a message beginning, “Hello, this is going to be an odd question…” I explained what I had found so far and asked, absurdly, “Could there be the remnants of an old well or spring in your basement?” Soon after, I received a call from Steve Stepp, co-owner of the National Audio Company. The answer, as it turns out, was yes. Steve filled me in on the history of the natural well, Water Street, and the National Audio Company building, helping to fill in the gaps in the narrative. The opening to that cavern — to Campbell’s bottomless well — was still there, in the basement of the National Audio Company.
I had to try to see it. Steve graciously obliged, and the date was set. I recruited my colleague Jaden; secured approval from HR and Administration through what I’m sure was one of the stranger requests to cross their desks; gathered hard hats, coveralls, and flashlights; and on May 7th, we arrived at the National Audio Company building to see the well.
The Descent to the Source
The basement of the National Audio Company sees few visitors. It was not hard to see why. A layer of mud that is both slick and viscous coats the floor; the air is hot and heavy with moisture. Once in the basement, Jaden and I trudged through two increasingly dark rooms. On the southern end of one of these rooms is a hole in the wall, about 7 feet high, accessible by a ladder. When I first climbed the ladder and looked through this opening, I excitedly reported to Jaden that it smelled like a cave. We were approaching the bottomless well of Water Street, or, what was left of it.
Once we had made our way through the hole — no small task — we found ourselves in a large room, stretching south into darkness toward Water Street. The ceiling was low, but I suspect it was not always that way. The waving sea of mud over which we crawled dipped sharply around the concrete pillars, suggesting that we were scrambling on several feet of accumulated mud. Everything that I had read suggested that the natural well would have been near the contemporary location of Water Street, so we continued to move south.
As we traversed the basement, I couldn’t help but wonder how many people had even seen this supposed cavern in the century or so since it had been inadvertently discovered — and how many others had tried to find it. Earlier in my research, I stumbled upon Underground Ozarks, the self-proclaimed “forum for urban exploration in the Ozarks.” Several intrepid urban explorers on the site had tried to ascertain the location of the “old well” or “bottomless spring,” and many had correctly pointed to the National Audio Company as its location. A few had even tried to access it, but, critically, not from above. Remember, Jordan Creek runs beneath Water Street via concrete tunnels. It’s said that somewhere within these tunnels, through an opening in the concrete, one can access a space referred to by locals as Hell’s Church, which allegedly, sits below the National Audio Company.
Now, here is where the geometry gets a little confusing. After covering up Jordan Creek, the city essentially laid a new Water Street on top of the culvert. This means that in some of the older buildings on Water Street, what are now basements were once at street level. (This is particularly noticeable on the Founders Park Lofts building.) It also means that the oldest basements and cellars of Water Street — those built before the tunnels — are now two layers deep, beneath the contemporary basements of Water Street. So, could Hell’s Church be beneath the National Audio Company, somehow sandwiched between it and the cave? I am doubtful. Given what we know about the construction of the National Audio Company building, I think it is much more likely that Hell’s Church is “next door” to the National Audio Company basement.
As we approached the southern end of the crawlspace, it was Jaden who first noticed something odd. The mud dipped away, creating a wide, horseshoe-shaped depression against the concrete wall. The surface sloped steeply down, and the mud-level was low enough that I could nearly stand up straight without hitting my head. Toward the base of the depression was the opening of a culvert, maybe 3 feet in diameter. Here, the air was thick with a damp, unmistakably speleological odor. This was it. We had arrived at the bottomless well of Water Street.
I got down onto my chest and crawled through the opening. It extended an arm’s length, and then dropped several feet. I pointed my flashlight down through a faint mist. Below: detritus and mud, yes, but also clear water, the distinctive texture of limestone, and beneath it all, so much startling darkness that you’d believe it really was bottomless.
Temporal Vertigo
There’s a sense of time collapsing. Above: an audio cassette manufacturing company. Next door, an old basement, entombed in the ground. Then, this opening — the crust of the bedrock cracked open by engineers nearly a century ago. This body of water, sounded and pumped by Edwin Hubble’s grandfather to provide clean, clear water to the people of Springfield. A generation earlier, John Polk Campbell and his brother, standing on a limestone shelf, looking down into the guts of a spring system. Innumerable generations of people before them, whose names are unknown to us but whose lives were as rich and full as ours, drawing from this very body of water. And there’s you, reading these words, at some point in my future — a week from now, maybe a year, possibly a century? After all, while the cavern will likely remain buried, the waters of Jordan Creek, to which it is connected, are being unearthed nearby through the Renew Jordan Creek project. Now it is the hope of Springfieldians that the waters which nourished the city at its founding will rejuvenate it today.
And there’s the stone itself: The lithified, pulverized, and disarticulated skeletons of ancient sea animals. Three hundred and fifty million years ago, the Ozarks was a shallow sea. Picture the ocean floor rolling and waving like a prairie, but with the feathery crowns of crinoids, filter-feeding relatives of starfish. These animals dominated the Ozarkian seabed, and as they died, the calcium carbonate from their skeletons began to form a new rock layer of Burlington-Keokuk limestone. The very bedrock of Springfield is predominantly composed of the remains of these animals. The ground we stand on, as well as every limestone cave, spring, and sinkhole in the region, is carved out of an ancient mass grave — a story well told by geologist Jerry D. Vineyard in Gargoyle Country: The Inspiring Geology of Springfield & Greene County. This Burlington-Keokuk limestone is the base layer of the history of Springfield, and the material out of which time and water carved Campbell’s natural well.
The cavern deep beneath the basement of the National Audio Company is more than just a hole in the ground, and it’s not just that it happens to be the founding site of Springfield. It’s a window into the recent and not-so-recent history of the region. Bottomless, indeed.
The Return to the Surface
I want to make this clear: I am not claiming this as a discovery. Campbell’s well was never truly lost, nor is it some secret I’ve unearthed. Others have tugged on this thread before. There are many people, some of whom may be reading this (hello!), who, upon finding Hubble’s article, would have immediately understood that he was referring to the karst window which was used as a natural well by early Springfieldians. Some of them may have known exactly where it was located, too.
In fact, as this project neared its conclusion, I happened to Google the terms “bottomless well” and “Water Street” together — a search I had conducted before. To my amazement, the first result was now a digital copy of Bullard, Thomson, and Vandike’s The Springs of Greene County, Missouri. In a section titled “Bottomless Well,” they write:
The existence of that well and its subterranean lake have captured the imagination of generations of Springfieldians. Every so often, the cave system gets “re-discovered.”
I suppose, then, that I have taken my place at the end of a long chain of excitable researchers who have found their way back to Campbell’s well and the structure in which it is embedded.
So, why write this piece? Because when I first asked, “what’s this about a bottomless well?” I couldn’t find a clear answer. Also, as far as I can tell, nobody has been obsessed with this question enough to crawl through the dross beneath the National Audio Company to actually see the thing. I’m hoping to save you the trouble and satisfy your curiosity. Campbell himself couldn’t honestly claim to have discovered the natural well. It was shown to him by guides who knew the land. Now, I have shown it to you.
Not only is this underground body of water the last vestige of the site of Springfield’s founding at the base stratigraphic layer of the city’s development, it is part of a subterranean system which undergirds much of the city, like the arteries of a stony sleeping giant. Nearly two centuries of growth, hardship, change, and decay have unfolded above, while, in silence and darkness, water has slowly moved below. It couldn’t be anything other than Water Street. You just can’t make it up.
The limestone bluffs which once rose over Jordan Creek were quarried over a century ago. Some of that rock found its way into the foundations of Springfield’s oldest structures. Although Campbell’s “bottomless” well is long gone, it lives on under your house, beneath your workplace, as rubble in a ditch, in the haze in your glass of water. Springfieldians: It is, quite literally, in your bones. Nothing ever really vanishes. It sedimentizes.
Let’s go back to the beginning.
The sun shines brightly overhead. John Polk Campbell, his brother, and their indigenous guides stand on a limestone shelf, overlooking the south bank of Jordan Creek. At their feet is a crack in the stone, filled nearly to the brim with water and impenetrable darkness. A grove of red oaks looms overhead — a sign of good soil, John thinks. He stoops down, grabs a rock, and drops it into the crack. It disappears entirely. Amazed, he crouches down, turning in a vain effort to allow sunlight to illuminate the depths. On his hands and knees, he peers in.
Water and stone below.
For Further Reading
Bullard, Loring. Jordan Creek: The Story of an Urban Stream. Springfield, MO: Watershed Committee of the Ozarks, n.d.
Bullard, Loring. Consider the Source: A History of the Springfield Missouri Public Water Supply. Springfield, MO: Watershed Press, 2005.
Bullard, Loring, Kenneth C. Thomson, and James E. Vandike. The Springs of Greene County, Missouri. Missouri Department of Natural Resources, 2001.
Citizen’s Directory Co., City Directory of Springfield, Missouri, 1909.
Glover, Eli Sheldon. Bird’s Eye View of Springfield, Missouri, 1872. Cincinnati: Strobridge Lithographing Company, 1872. Copy held by the Local History & Genealogy Department, Springfield-Greene County Library.
Hubble, Martin J. “Early History of Springfield.” The Springfield Daily Republican, July 4, 1909, p. 22.
Missouri Department of Natural Resources. GeoSTRAT.
Missouri Patriot. “Plenty of Water.” September 24, 1874, p. 3.
OpenStreetMap Contributors. OpenStreetMap. https://www.openstreetmap.org.
R. L. Polk & Co. Polk’s Springfield (Missouri) City Directory, 1930. Kansas City, MO: R. L. Polk & Co., 1930.
Sanborn Map Company. Insurance Maps of Springfield, Missouri, 1933; Revised to January 1950. Accessible through the Historical Information Gatherer’s Fire Insurance Map Online (FIMo) tool: https://0-fims-historicalinfo-com.coolcat.org/FIMS.aspx.
Springfield Historical Address Conversion Tool. Internal tool used by the Local History & Genealogy Department, Springfield-Greene County Library.
Springfield Press. “Strike Big Subterranean Cave in Excavation for Warehouse.” July 4, 1929, p. 1.
Underground Ozarks. https://www.undergroundozarks.com.
Vineyard, Jerry D. Gargoyle Country: The Inspiring Geology of Springfield & Greene County. Watershed Press, n.d.
Ward and City Limit Map of Springfield, Missouri, 1910. Held by the Local History & Genealogy Department.
A correction was made on June 16, 2025: An earlier version of this story erroneously named the 1921 plaque as the most recent marker of the well's location. This piece has been updated to include the sidewalk marker installed in 2003.
Acknowledgements
This work would not have been possible without the assistance, contributions, and support of:
Local History & Genealogy
Jaden Melnick
Brian Grubbs
Claire Porter
Ben Divin
Landyn Block
Gary Larsen
Michael Price
Konrad Stump
Madison Huffman
Renee Glass
Library District Support
Jessie East
Ed Walton
Lori Ruzicka
National Audio Company
Steve Stepp
Katie Reed
Blaine Love
and
Brad Kelly
Mullin Evans