While most distilleries draw their water from public water sources today, that was not necessarily the case before Prohibition. 90% of the US population gets their drinking water from public water systems today, but 100 years ago, that percentage was closer to 40-50%. Access to drinking water in the US drastically improved during the mid-1900s as the U.S. population and the businesses they relied upon grew in size. As infrastructure development took off, federal regulation brought nearly universal access to water to America’s growing cities by the 1950s. The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 mandated federal oversight of water quality which helped to build public trust in all that publicly accessible water. This was great news for folks in the city, but not everyone requiring access to large amounts of water were IN America’s cities. Distilleries in urban areas may have had access to public water, but large rural distilleries did not…and MOST of America’s distilleries were far enough outside of the city for water access to be a constant concern for them. The rerouting of America’s waterways to serve the public need slowly took its toll and reduced the flow of water in the rivers, creeks, and streams that distilleries had long taken for granted. As time wore on throughout the 19th century, everyone needed to adapt.
Distillery locations were historically chosen for their proximity to a water source. While most historically significant distillery sites were built beside a river, those rivers had always been unpredictable. Their water levels were dropping and they were becoming more polluted, so the quality of the water was suffering. Drilling machines were introduced in the early 1800s, which presented a whole new option for distillers. Many distilleries began being built inland from rivers, using drills to dig deep wells into pristine water sources beneath the ground. Even those distillery sites that had been built near rivers chose to dig a well (or several wells!) to supplement their access to fresh water.
Distilleries pumped water from the river (or creek) for many purposes- boilers, steam, hose lines, hydrants, worm tubs, etc., but the river was not always a distillery’s primary water source. The river wasn’t just a water source, after all. It had always been a handy vehicle for importing and exporting goods…and for dumping refuse. The cold, fresh water used for whiskey production was more commonly drawn from deep wells below the distillery (or local springs), not from the river. When a neighboring town or city established a public water company, however, distilleries wasted no time connecting to that new water source. The ease of that public water supply was too convenient. It made no sense to continue to operate a pump house, not to mention all the mechanical and maintenance issues that came with all of that, when they could just tap into the local system with everyone else. The rerouting of America’s natural water sources was well under way (pun not intended) by the late 1800s. The shift from river water to well water was one thing, but the access to treated, publicly accessible water would change the way whiskey was made. If you didn’t own access to your own well, you were at the mercy of the local water company.
The article below, printed in The Lancaster Examiner (Lancaster, Pa) on August 24, 1859, describes artesian wells. These are wells that draw subterranean water without the aid of pumps. The positive pressure between the clay and rock below the surface creates a natural vacuum. Most deep wells, however, required a pump to draw fresh water to the surface, and most distilleries built their own specialized pump houses to draw the water they required. There are many freshwater springs that keep steady streams of very cold ground water (temperature depends on latitude and elevation) flowing into streams and ponds. While early distilleries sought a natural spring source, distilleries requiring a steady source of spring water dug their own “natural spring source” with a mechanical drill bit.
The first mechanical drill ever used to dig a well for water was in 1808. Then, digging efforts got more intensive as drillers attempted to see what they could achieve and how deep they could go to find water. A lot of the distillers I’ve researched in PA bragged about the depths of their wells and the consistent temperatures of the ground water that they were accessing, so I wanted to know more. The attached article describes the incredible depths they were reaching with mechanical drills and the strata along the way. But then I thought, “This sounds like they’re digging for oil” which, of course, was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1859. But when I looked up the exact date Edwin Drake struck oil with his well in Titusville, PA and launched the oil boom in Pennsylvania, that date was listed as August 27, 1859! That was just three days after the article above (“Artesian Wells”) was written! I love these little coincidences, don’t you?
*That 40% figure is an estimate because data collection on public services had not yet begun in earnest before 1920.