A collection of postcard images documenting the golden age of flowing artesian wells across the United States and the world, generally from the early 1900s and with a bias toward Texas. Also included, from time to time, are other water-related postcards.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

written up in the paper!


The lovely Andrea Ball interviewed me last week about my passion for artesian well postcards, and the article is in today's paper! Yay! Originally she was going to write about my passion for antique electric fans, but she got intrigued by my fixation on artesian well postcards, which is more unusual.

Allow me to flesh out a few things:

  • My collecting focus is on post cards of Texas artesian wells, although I've drifted a wee bit into postcards from New Mexico in the Pecos River Valley (they play an important role in Texas water history, I used to live in the Land of Enchantment, and that part of the NM used to be Texas, right?), postcards from wherever that claim to have the world's largest artesian well (which is blasphemy since Texas clearly owns the bragging rights!), simply bizarre or unique artesian wells (like the artesian tree in Florida), artesian wells of historic importance (such as the Grenelle well of Paris, France [which sadly seems to have stopped flowing by the time photography was invented]), and postcards of historic wells in Texas from (ahem) water-table (that is, non-artesian) aquifers.
  • The bride points out that it sounds like I've spent $500 to $1,000 on postcards, which sounds crazy [note: Andrea simply quoted what I told her]. I'm pretty sure I haven't spent that much, and I 've gotten a number of postcards for much less than five bucks. However, most that appear on the bay of E are in that range. Some show up for as much as $50 (but I'm not paying that much)! And then there's that artesian well postcard from Mason that got away from me...
  • The postcards I post on this blog are mostly screen captures, and I don't care where they came from geographically. 
  • It's just neat to see all these flowing wells from all over the world. At least to me it is...