It’s not an easy task to dig a hole down through layers of soil, limestone, sandstone and shale to reach the layers of gravel and sand that catch and store water underground.
Even in earliest human history, it became obvious that the water in surface streams, rivers and ponds would not be enough to supply everyone. So people started digging wells. The Bible says that Moses smote the rock with his rod and fountain of water burst from the ground. Archaeological evidence shows us that the ancient Persians, Egyptians and Chinese built wells to tap groundwater.
Those ancient wells were dug by hand, a laborious and dangerous task. As the wells got deeper, the walls were in constant danger of caving in. It could take weeks, months or even years to build deeper and deeper wells.
In the 40s, the technology finally caught up with the need.
Before World War II, augers had been used to drill shallow wells, but there was a limit to how far down an auger could be turned and the walls of the hole were not supported as the well was dug. In another technique, a hollow “drive point” was hammered down through the rock until it hit water. But the drive point percussion system could not produce a very wide hole, and so the amount of water produced by the well was very limited.
The irrigation industry borrowed techniques from the oil industry. Since the mid-1800s, oil well drillers had been building large pyramid shaped derricks over a well site. Then a cutting bit with industrial diamonds imbedded in it was attached to a pipe, and the pipe and bit were rotated and forced down through the dirt and rock. The debris, or “cuttings,” were then forced back up the hole by water that was pumped down either the outside of the hole or the inside of the drill pipe. The walls of the well were stabilized by the introduction of a dense clay substance that penetrated the loose dirt on the side walls and hardened it.
