The Rising Well of Olympia
A local well is mysteriously emerging from the ground, brick by brick, defying gravity and logic.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Near Olympia, Wash., is a well that is coming gradually to the surface. It is between twenty and thirty feet in depth. For some time the brick wall of the well has been protruding through the ground, until now it sticks up into the air like a funnel to the height of ten or fifteen feet. The bricks are undisturbed, and the wall is intact. The bottom of the well, too, is rising with the wall.
“The bricks are undisturbed, and the wall is intact. The bottom of the well, too, is rising with the wall.”
While this sounds like a tall tale from the turn of the century, geological shifts or artesian pressure can occasionally cause strange ground displacements, though rarely as neatly as a rising well. It serves as a reminder of the folklore that defined early Washington frontier life.
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