A Vacant Lot

An overgrown lilac bush, an out-of-place hemlock, an outline of a cinder block foundation, a weathered wood picket fence; these are the signs of past life.  Fossils of human existence in the country or in a lot among new curbed streets and businesses. A vacant lot can be a place for information about underground layer, because there may have been a water well on the place.

I am showing to you another geologist's trick-of-the-trade.  Where other scientists and planners drive by a lot, I stop and look around for an old water well.  My tip-off, today was a picket fence.  It spanned the front part of a vacant lot in West Salem, between several businesses.  Two large trees overshadowed the site, and a pole stood in the back of the lot where an electric power meter could have been placed. I was riding the bus, but in passing there looked like a three or foot foot square concrete pad for the old water well.  The signs were worth checking, so I pulled out a Salem West 7 1/2 minute topographic map, and there was a little black rectangle on the spot for a house.

A Well House in rural Benton County, Oregon

This discovery encouraged me to look up water wells in the Oregon Water Resources Department water well directory (Google- "OWRD" - wells in Township 7 South , Range 3 West, Section 22.  I had to pencil the outline of the section on the topographic map, because the area is shot through with odd-shaped parcels, called Donation Land Claims.

The "long and short" of the search is that I did not find the well, but looking for wells is like looking for sea gulls.  When you look for one, you will find others. Three other water wells popped up within a quarter mile and two of them have driller's logs. This is how to get an idea of the underground setting of a place.