WorldWide Drilling Resource

49 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® DECEMBER 2019 Through the Back Door! by Jim Kuebelbeck Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land. As with most laws enacted, there are often unintended consequences. Many land speculators at the time, hoping to make future profits on the sale of such land, purchased “dummy” ownership of many thousands of acres of government land. Many circumvented the intended requirements for ownership of the land by making “small” improvements on the land (such as cutting down a few small trees for a supposed future farming effort). To more easily justify their supposed intent to establish a homestead on such land, most land speculators selected sites along rivers and streams. True pioneers and settlers were sometimes left with no option but to file homestead claims far away from easily accessible water sources. Building makeshift structures or log cabins on those sites was a first priority, but the acquisition of a nearby water supply was the second most important necessity. Wells dug down to shallow surface water tables were the norm at the time, and with the min- imal needs of the early settlers, these shallow wells proved to be quite adequate. The digging of these wells, however, often con- sumed weeks or months of hard labor, and all too often those efforts proved futile when no shallow water was encountered. In an effort to avoid such wasted time and effort, the early settlers often relied on the advice of someone who could apparently predict the presence of underground water sources far more often than “the laws of chance and average” would allow. (How some of these early, and present-day, water finders were, and are, able to sense underground water sources remains somewhat of an unexplainable human faculty to this day.) Government surveyors and geologists at the time referred to these water finders as delusional and superstitious. (How could it be some ignorant, illiterate homesteader could locate a groundwater source at a rate better than the “more conventional” methods used by “professional” people?) Rather than making an effort to discover how this might be possible, it was far easier to simply refer to these early water finders as “water witches”. The infamous Salem, Massachusetts Witch Trials of 1692 were still present in the psyche of many people at the time, and the term “water witching” soon became synonymous in the minds of many people as a reference to the “occult”. My belief is our Creator envisioned a time in the future when mankind will have learned to use and protect our precious ground- water sources, and in His wisdom continues to endow certain individuals with the ability to locate these precious underground water sources for future generations. The statements and comments in this article are based on information and references believed to be true and factual. If you have any questions or comments, please forward them to me in care of WWDR . Jim Jim Kuebelbeck may be contacted via e-mail to michele@worldwidedrillingresource.com EXB