36 Nebraskaland • October 2020
.W. Carlin survived a 143-foot fall down a well, but then
he had another problem. Nobody knew he was there,
and no one was likely to come looking for him. If he was
to make it out alive, he would have to do it on his own.
These photos show some other Nebraska wells in the
1880s through about 1900. Well digging was a vital, diffi cult
and dangerous task on the high plains. Shallow wells could
be dug with an auger, but on tablelands a well might have
to go down 100 or even 200 feet. Before hydraulic drilling,
sometimes the only way to do it was to go down the hole
yourself and have a man to raise and lower the rope.
Professional well-diggers learned their trade by experience.
It wasn't just the digging. Sections of a well might also need
to be "curbed" with wooden boards to keep them from caving
in. There were a lot of ways to die: cave-ins, falling buckets,
or asphyxiation from "the damp" (carbon monoxide).
Abandoned wells could be dangerous, too, as Mr. Carlin
discovered in 1895. Historian Everett Dick told the story
in Conquering the Great American Desert, published by the
Nebraska State Historical Society (aka History Nebraska) in
1975:
"The danger from these deep wells was not confi ned to well
diggers and those who went down to repair curb or water-
raising equipment. After the great exodus of settlers from
western Nebraska in the 1890s, vast expanses of the country
lay unoccupied. Many homesteaders had either abandoned
their claims, allowing them to revert to the government, or
had mortgaged them to Eastern loan companies, which left
their Nebraska property unoccupied. This meant hundreds of
old, deteriorating wells remained on these abandoned claims
F
Falling Down a Well ... and
Another Cliff Table well, 1889. Photographer Solomon Butcher noted that wells on the high tableland "were from 350 to 400
feet deep." History Nebraska RG2608-0-3537
