AUGUST 15 • ENID'S WATER STORY • PART 2 OF 8

The 26-Foot Well

In January 1900, Enid voters overwhelmingly approved a $40,000 municipal waterworks program. Three months later, a national engineering journal described its source in a way that still jumps off the page: a well 26 feet in diameter.

Published Aug. 15, 2026 · Updated Aug. 21, 2026 · Part 2 of 8

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Part 1 ended with a number.

Twenty-six feet.

The surprise is the direction.

The contemporary report did not say Enid planned a well 26 feet deep.

It said the well was 26 feet across.^[3]

That extraordinary detail is real enough to appear in a national engineering publication from 1900. But it also illustrates something important about historical reporting: a surviving record can tell us something remarkable without answering every question we want to ask.

We know what the journal reported.

We do not yet know exactly where that well was, exactly what it looked like, or whether any surviving photograph shows it.

So first, the part of the story we can establish.

Before the well came a vote

Enid had been talking publicly about waterworks since at least 1894. By the end of 1899, the discussion had become a specific municipal proposal.

On December 4, 1899, Enid's mayor and City Council approved Ordinance No. 127, laying out a detailed plan for a city-owned waterworks.^[1]

The ordinance authorized Enid to purchase, build, equip, manage and maintain a system that could include a standpipe, hydrants, water mains and pipes, boilers, engines, machinery and other equipment required to operate the system.^[1]

And the ordinance was explicit about why the city wanted it.

Water was to be supplied for fire prevention and firefighting, as well as domestic, manufacturing, public and other uses.^[1]

The maximum authorized cost was $40,000.

To pay for it, the city proposed waterworks bonds in $1,000 denominations, running for 20 years and bearing 6 percent annual interest. The bond issue required voter approval.^[1]

Even the newspaper argument surrounding the proposal sounds familiar more than a century later.

The Enid Echo argued that the city needed fire protection but acknowledged that the first plant would not protect every property equally. Its case was essentially incremental: establish a workable system first, then enlarge and extend it as Enid grew.^[1]

That prediction would prove important.

Because Enid was going to grow faster than one waterworks project could solve.

541 to 70

The voters made their decision in January 1900.

The Oklahoma State Capital reported that Enid's special waterworks bond election passed by a vote of:

541 for. 70 against.^[2]

For a city only a little more than six years removed from the Cherokee Outlet opening, that vote represented a major commitment to permanent infrastructure.

Enid was no longer debating whether it should have a municipal water system.

It was going to build one.

And within months, the project appeared in the national engineering press.

Then comes the 26-foot number

On April 26, 1900, Engineering News included Enid in its national roundup of waterworks construction.^[3]

The short item reported that Ernest Mueller had been awarded the contract for the works at approximately $40,000.

It described a pumping engine with a capacity of about 1,400 gallons per minute, two miles of water mains, and then the sentence that caught our attention:

The water supply would come from a well reported to be 26 feet in diameter.^[3]

Not 26 feet deep.

Twenty-six feet across.

The original printed page confirms the $40,000 figure even though automated text recognition of the old page can misread it. The amount also corresponds with the maximum cost authorized by Enid's own ordinance.^[1][3]

But there is an important qualification.

Engineering News described the contract as reported to have been awarded. This was a contemporary construction-news item, not an as-built engineering drawing or final City completion report.

It is strong evidence that a 26-foot-diameter well was part of the reported 1900 waterworks design.

It does not, by itself, tell us everything else.

What we still do not know

Enid Public Record has not yet located a record that conclusively establishes the precise location of the reported 26-foot well.

We also have not found a record that lets us confidently point to a particular structure in a surviving photograph and say:

That's it.

The Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center archival photograph identified as “Water Works — early days” is an important visual record of Enid's early municipal water system.

But we are not identifying any structure in that photograph as the 26-foot well without additional evidence.

That distinction matters.

A historic photograph and a historic engineering report can both be authentic while still not proving that the object in one is the object described in the other.

Fire protection was not an abstract concern

The 1899 ordinance had put firefighting near the center of the case for a waterworks.

Then came July 1901.

A devastating fire swept through Enid's business district.

A contemporary report in the Oklahoma Leader said four blocks of business buildings were destroyed in less than three hours. The newspaper reported that the water supply was inadequate and firefighters ultimately used dynamite to destroy buildings in an effort to stop the flames.^[4]

The paper estimated total losses at $200,000.^[4]

That does not prove the new waterworks caused, failed to prevent, or was solely responsible for the outcome. A severe drought was also reported, and a fire's behavior depends on many factors.

But it establishes something important:

Enid's water-supply and firefighting problem did not disappear when the city approved its first municipal system.

And the concern persisted.

In April 1904, the Enid Weekly Wave reported after a restaurant fire that Enid's waterworks could not sustain more than two nozzle streams for more than an hour.^[5]

Again, that is a contemporary newspaper account, not a modern engineering test.

But placed beside the 1899 ordinance and the 1901 fire, it reveals the larger pattern.

Enid had built a water system.

Then Enid began outgrowing it.

The first system was never supposed to be the last

There is something almost prophetic in the Enid Echo's argument before the 1900 bond vote.

The newspaper told readers that once a waterworks was established, it could be enlarged and extended as the city grew.^[1]

That is essentially what the next century of Enid water history became.

The first municipal system was not an endpoint.

It was the beginning of a pattern:

Find water. Build infrastructure. Grow. Encounter another limitation. Go looking for more.

The reported 26-foot well belongs near the beginning of that story.

But what happened next beneath Enid's Water Works becomes stranger — and much better documented.

Later federal records describe a central pumping pit, underground collection galleries and another enormous municipal well built of brick.

And above that underground system sat a feature Enid residents would eventually know by a much less impressive name:

the frog pond.

That's Part 3.

Sources & notes

These are the records used for the factual claims in Part 2. EPR links readers to the original record whenever an online copy is available.

[1] Enid Echo, Jan. 10, 1900 — Ordinance No. 127

Primary local record reproducing Enid's waterworks ordinance, approved Dec. 4, 1899. It establishes the $40,000 maximum cost, planned standpipe/hydrants/mains/equipment, fire and domestic uses, financing terms and voter-approval requirement. The same page contains contemporary editorial advocacy for starting a system and extending it as Enid grew.

Open newspaper page ↗

[2] Oklahoma State Capital, Jan. 28, 1900 — “Water Works for Enid”

Contemporary report of the special Enid waterworks bond election, giving the result as 541 to 70.

Open newspaper page ↗

[3] Engineering News, Apr. 26, 1900, Vol. XLIII Supplement, p. 137

Contemporary engineering-trade report stating that Ernest Mueller was reported to have received the Enid waterworks contract at about $40,000, with an approximately 1,400-gallon-per-minute pumping engine, two miles of mains and a source well 26 feet in diameter.

Open scanned engineering issue ↗

[4] Oklahoma Leader, July 18, 1901 — Enid business-district fire

Contemporary report that four blocks of business buildings were destroyed, the water supply was inadequate, buildings were dynamited to check the fire, and losses were estimated at $200,000.

Open newspaper page ↗

[5] Enid Weekly Wave, Apr. 14, 1904 — waterworks/fire report

Contemporary local report stating that the city waterworks could not keep more than two nozzle streams operating for more than an hour.

Open newspaper page ↗

Archival image — Water Works, early days

Creator unknown, Richard McConkay Photo Collection. Image Courtesy Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center. Accession 2015.239.3947.

Open original archival record ↗

Reporting note: The 26-foot-diameter well is presented as a contemporary engineering report. Its precise location and photographic identification have not been independently established.