55. Mural – The Jumbo Well

8^th Street

Belle Plain, Iowa

September 21, 2010

In 1886, a well for a creamery was drilled at Belle Plaine in the Iowa River valley; this well also tapped the sand and gravel aquifer. The elevation of this well was about 100 feet lower than the previously drilled livestock wells, resulting in a strong flow of water from the well. At the well head, the artesian pressure of the aquifer was sufficient to lift the water 67 feet above the surface. In August 1886, the City of Belle Plaine contracted to have a well drilled for fire protection. This well soon became widely known by the name "Jumbo." In the words of geologist W.H. Norton (1896): "The notoriety of Jumbo was strictly that of a member of the criminal class, and began with the driller’s resistance to control, and lasted only until his final imprisonment. The beginning of the trouble lay in the fact that the driller attempted to use the force of the flow in reaming out the two-inch bore, which he had put down for want of a larger drill, to three inches, the dimension specified in the contract. This task the water speedily accomplished in the unindurated clays and sands, but not stopping there went on and soon enlarged the bore to over three feet in diameter. When the driller saw the result of his inexcusable carelessness, which result he ought to have foreseen, he hastily decamped and was not heard of until the popular excitement had subsided." The flow from Jumbo roiled out of the three-foot bore in a fountain that stood five feet high. Estimates of the initial, maximum flows varied from 30,000 to 50,000 gallons per minute. The flow diminished rapidly, and two weeks later was calculated to be about 2,000 gallons per minute, by Professor T.C. Chamberlain from the University of Chicago. Along with the water came sand -- an estimated 500 to 1,000 carloads of sand. "The quantity was certainly so great that only with the greatest effort could the ditches be kept open to carry off the water"(Mosnat, 1898). Chunks of fossil wood and stones weighing over two pounds were also hurled from the well. Norton (1896) describes the effort to stem the flow, which ultimately took over 13 months: "During this time the well, 193 feet deep, devoured, as the local historian recounts, 163 feet of 18-inch pipe, 77 feet of 16-inch pipe, 60 feet of 5-inch pipe, an iron cone 3 feet in diameter and 24 feet long, 40 carloads of stone, 130 barrels of cement, and an inestimable amount of sand and clay."