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Man those old timers put in some hard work years ago.

Nice photos! Thanks!

Indeed!

Cool stuff. Love seeing photos like this

Neat old photos. Those were the days when the local government didn't regulate every aspect of your life. However those old wells probably killed more people than than guns in the olden days.

How old are the structures do you think?

Deep well hand-digging is not my forte.

You either did it or you and your family didn't survive, plain and simple.

It was built in the late 1800’s. It sits in the mouth of a hollow across from my house. I took these pictures before they tore the chimney down to make a landing for loading logs. We covered the well with a piece of sheet metal to keep anything from falling in it.

Need for that "root hog, or die" to come back.

Way the hell too many just living off big govt now.

I can't find a damn thing in the Constitution where our federal govt is supposed to be a charity.

I regularly come across old foundations & wells & orchards & stone piles in the rural sections of NY state.
I think of all the manual labor it must have taken to clear the forest & start a life there. Now much of that land is back to forest.

One of the few things that our founders didn’t fully anticipate was how our later politicians would use the promise of “free stuff” to buy votes. That combined with every dreamed up form of “diversity” has allowed politicians to create problems for them to pander to and “solve” in exchange for votes.

Driving through the neighborhood where one of my rentals is located today, I see a bunch of signs for 2 people running for Congress. Must be a war going on for control of that area. The slogan on the one person's sign read "Prosperity For All". Democrat, of course.

These are homeowners, for the most part. Beats me why people would vote for dirtbags trying to give their schit away to some undeserving louse.

I’d opt for death.

Work sucks.

I've got a well like that on my property. I've often wondered how many hours were involved in digging and lining it with rocks that way. Amazing work!

There's still a foundation and well from an old homestead back in the woods about 600 yards behind my place. The neighbor down the road, who is in his 70's, says the house was still standing when he was a boy. Said his father remembers when people still lived in it. There is no road or driveway to it and he says there never was. There's also still a hand dug well behind my dad's house. It was built in 1895.

Thanks for sharing those pictures. Any idea how deep that well is?

You couldn't pay me enough to go down that hole to build it.

Having spent 36 years drilling well, those dug wells are seen from time to time. Every single one I worked on had dead critters a floating. Typhus breeding ground. I almost wasn't here because of a hand dug well. My grandfather as a young man stopped by a relatives farm in Limestone county Texas with his 3 year old daughter in tow. Drinking from the well he and her both got typhus from contaminates in the water. In an unconscious state he awoke 3 days later on the mend. His 3 year old daughter was not as lucky. He had to bury her before he returned home.

An engineer I worked with was in the Peace Corps in Africa when he was young. The village he was assigned to needed a well. He built 3' diameter concrete rings , 3 feet high. Got the natives to get inside and dig out the inside till the concrete ring settled to the bottom of the hole. He would then add another 3' concrete ring and the digging would continue. The well went to a depth of @60' and had 6" of standing water. Defines the phrase "African under reamer".

I would say it’s close to 20 feet down to the water. I don’t know how deep it goes below the water level. It amazes me how they stacked the rocks in it.