Enterprise Album
An early morning walk this week revealed this vintage hand water pump in the side yard of a house on West Church Street.
From the town’s founding until September 1905 when the village’s municipal water system started pumping clear, safe water to homes and businesses, citizens were served by individual, private, mostly hand dug wells.
Dr. D.O. Sheppard notes in The Story of Barnesville, “it is shocking to think of the cases of typhoid fever Barnesville had each summer” that were related to contaminated well water.
“The wells which had been the source of all drinking water since the town was founded were old and, being unprotected from the surface water, became contaminated with typhoid. Besides, business was suffering from the lack of sufficient quantities of safe water suitable for industrial purposes”.
In 1902 and 1903, Barnesville’s citizens approved initiatives to construct a reservoir and water treatment plant south of town on today’s Waterworks Road.
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