GREENLAND TOWNSHIP — In an Upper Peninsula ghost town, a hose sticking out of a hole in the ground is leaking mysterious water. People in the area have been drinking it for many years.
“It is probably the purest water you’d ever taste,” said Ron Store, 56, an Ontonagon County commissioner. “You can put this stuff in a glass jar and leave it on your porch for a month; it won’t turn green. “That is how good this stuff is.”
This water is found in Lake Mine, a ghost town located within the boundaries of Greenland Township, just east of the Lake Superior coast in the western Upper Peninsula.
The well is a cluster of old concrete pilings with a hole in the center framed by wood and topped by a metal grate, resembling a former structure. Below is an old pipe with a few valves and spigots, from which the hose emerges.
It’s just off a trail in the woods, shrouded by vegetation in the summer and hidden by snow in the winter, but it’s difficult to find regardless.
For a century, the only people who knew about it were those who lived nearby and drank it, passing down the secret well in the woods. “Everybody around here knew, and everybody would use it quietly,” Store told me.
That all changed when the state found out.
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy learned about it a few years ago and stated that there is simply no way people can drink unregulated water from an unknown source coming from a hose in the ground. They ordered that it be shut down.
Its users were outraged, almost literally. They told EGLE that they had been drinking the water for generations. Nobody has ever gotten sick from it, they claimed. And they didn’t want the state to tell them what they could and couldn’t drink.
“At the time I told them, ‘You know, you go ahead and shut this thing down and you’re going to be greeted by guns,'” Store replied. “And that is the truth. I had people saying, ‘You tell me when they’re coming, and we’ll defend it.'”
A secret no more
The Bill Nicholls Trail is used for a variety of activities, including hiking and horseback riding in the summer and snowmobiling and cross-country skiing in winter.
The Department of Natural Resources carved it out of an old railroad grade on land acquired in 1974. It stretches 41 miles through dense wilderness, thick forests, and a few copper mining ghost towns. Lake Mine is one such town.
A few years ago, a DNR crew was grading the trail when their blade nicked a shallow pipe, causing water to burst. Workers followed the line until they arrived at the hidden trailside well.
To their surprise, they discovered that it was not only used as drinking water by hundreds of people in the area, but it was also piped into some nearby homes.
“It was a surprise to everyone because this was not on any infrastructure maps,” said Stacy Welling Haughey, a DNR field deputy in the Upper Peninsula. “This line shouldn’t have been there. It didn’t appear on any documents. “That is how old it was.”
Lake Mine was established in 1840 and was originally known as Belt after the copper mining company that operated a single shaft mine there. The Lake Copper Company purchased the land in 1905, built 80 homes for its employees, and renamed the town Lake Mine.
To provide them with water, the company drilled until it discovered an underground reservoir, then installed pipes to deliver the water to all of their homes. In addition, the company constructed a well and a water tower alongside the railroad tracks where steam engine locomotives could stop and fill up.
The mine soon closed, the trains stopped coming, the houses crumbled, and the tower finally collapsed into a heap of debris. However, the people of the region continued to use the water from the well beneath it. To this day, there are often several people lined up near the well, waiting to fill jugs, bottles, and even tanks that can hold hundreds of gallons of water before taking it home.
“I like how cold it is, how fresh it tastes,” said Nicole DeHaan, 40, of Mass City. “I know a lot of farmers near me use it because their wells can’t keep up with watering their cattle. I know some elderly people who rely solely on that for drinking.
And many hunters come up; they don’t have water in their camp, so they use that. I know some people in Ontonagon who use it because their water tests positive for uranium and their filtration systems cannot remove it, so they come here to get water to drink and cook with.”
Wells draw water from underground aquifers, which are water pockets in the solid layer beneath the soil known as the deep bedrock. A free-flowing well uses underground pressure to bring water to the surface, eliminating the need for a pump.
Wells like these are used in rural communities where residents are too dispersed for a municipal water system to be practical, and they are frequently less prone to pollution than surface water. The majority of wells are 100-500 feet underground, but some are much deeper depending on the geology of the area.
Well water is relatively common in Michigan. According to EGLE, more than a million households in the state rely on this method for drinking water, and approximately 15,000 new wells are drilled annually.
Although a hidden well in the woods may appear unusual, unregistered old wells are not entirely uncommon in Michigan. “You’ll find those scattered all over the state where there are naturally occurring springs, and people have been using them for years, mostly for seasonal homes or watering livestock,” said Kate Beer of the Western U.P. Health Department.
“There’s a lot of salt water that gets into the wells around here, and this is some of the best water that we’ve ever tasted,” said Ontonagon resident Kayln Hudson-Store, 44. “Everyone uses it over their own wells; they just don’t advertise it.”
However, no one knew the exact source of the Lake Mine water. The pipe led from the well to a nearby hillside, but then descended deep into the ground. Old mining records are sparse and unhelpful.
According to local legend, it was an artesian aquifer, and the constant water pressure it provides supports this theory. “This is probably 100% pre-glacier water,” Store said. “You’ve reached the purest source. There are no chemicals in it. Nothing can penetrate it.”
Even if that was originally true, EGLE stated that the entire area has been heavily mined over the years, and all of the drilling may have breached or cracked the bedrock, contaminating the water. Furthermore, the 3-inch, century-old steel pipe that brings the water to the surface is now brittle and vulnerable to infiltration. Because the well is on state property, the DNR was required to cap it.
“The DNR needs to cease and desist serving water to the public by use of the trailside flowing water outlet,” EGLE stated flatly in its order in late 2022.
“To date, all efforts to identify and locate the source, presumed to be on state forest land (administered by the DNR), have been unsuccessful and, despite explicit signage directing people not to drink the water, the public continues to use water for consumption and other household purposes.”
The public was outraged.
“We all thought it was bullshit,” said Candi Finley, 46, from Mass City. “We’ve been using it forever. There is no reason to shut it down. “It’s far superior to well water.”
Her father echoed her feelings. He’s been drinking from the well since 1980, when he purchased his Mass City home as a hunting retreat. “A lot of people, the older ones, they’ve lived on it their whole life,” said Wes Finley, 67. “I don’t believe they’re messing with it. It’s unbelievable why they’re doing this. Simply leave it alone.
Joe Porter also has a hunting camp near the well, which his family uses for water. “In my eyes, it’s a natural water source,” said the 37-year-old from Ludington. “When I spoke with EGLE last summer, I mentioned that I could go to the lake and get water. Are you going to stop me from doing that too? How will you limit where I can get my water?”
An unexpected twist
Store, like most people in the area, went years without thinking about bringing home water for himself, his family, and his farm animals. Suddenly, he was leading a campaign to save it for everyone.
“I’m just a lonely little county commissioner, just been sworn in a month ago, and now I’m leading the charge on this thing,” he joked. “Everybody’s calling me, saying the DNR is going to shut this well down, what can we do about it?”
Residents contacted state regulators on their home phones. County officials convened meetings with the departments involved. State legislators in the area advocated on behalf of their constituents.
Local historians came forward with clues to the source of the water based on old maps and newspaper articles, hoping to prove its purity. The Western U.P. Health Department tested the water coming out of the hose on a regular basis and found it to be safe.
Meanwhile, while this was being resolved, EGLE directed that a sign be posted by the well, right next to the concrete pilings left over from the long-gone railroad water tower, warning people not to drink from the hose. But people kept stealing the signs.
However, this was their mildest form of protest.
“Locals threatened to physically block the DNR from closing it off,” said Mike Kocher, 65, Ontonagon County’s emergency services director. “It could have turned ugly. We were able to persuade locals to let us see what we could do.
Store warned state officials about the same danger. “You do something really radical like just coming in and shutting it off, you’re going to be met with a lot of resistance, and somebody’s going to get hurt,” Store predicted. “We can solve this if you’re willing to sit down and talk.”
Then an unexpected event occurred, surprising everyone. The DNR offered to assist people in keeping the water.
“I think it was the human part of it, like, ‘If this was my community, if this was my well, what would I want someone else to do?'” According to DNR spokesperson Welling Haughey. “I would want them to do everything they could to help fix it.
I don’t think anyone realized how important it was, how widely it was used, and how impactful it was. So we wanted to do everything we could to fix it and make things right with the community.
The DNR discovered the pipe, traced it to the well head, and even offered to run a camera down the water main to see if it could be kept operational. But EGLE said no to all of it. According to the department, none of the pipes, wells, or hoses are up to code. They simply cannot be saved, they said.
This frustrated the locals. “Here we have this absolutely pure source of water that’s been running for 100 years,” Kocher told the audience. “But because of the way rules and regs are written, we can’t use it in its current form.”
So the DNR has now offered to drill two new wells that will meet current standards. One will be for the people who draw water from the well and take it home, and the other will be for the last house that still relies on the water that was piped in a century ago.
“That’s unprecedented that the DNR’s actually going to pay to have two wells drilled,” Mr. Kocher said. “But they want to do the right thing and get out from underneath it.”
EGLE stated that if new wells are dug, the water will continue to flow. The deadline is September, but it is a moving target. “If another extension is needed I believe it most likely will be granted as long as progress toward final resolution is being maintained,” said Scott Dean, an EGLE spokesperson.
Now that the hard ground has thawed, the DNR is working with a driller to find a suitable drilling location. A local logging company provided some land for the new wells. The township offered to take ownership and conduct regular safety testing.
The only thing left to do is figure out where the water in the hose came from. The only way to do this is to drill and see what they get.
In the meantime, word has spread about the secret well. “I’ve seen motorcycles pull in from Montana and Wyoming, and they stop and try it and they’re like, ‘Wow, that’s some of the best water we’ve ever had,'” Store replied. “How the hell do they know about it?”
Store recently had a brief hospital stay, during which he was given Lake Mine well water. He insisted that it was much better than the hospital water.
“My wife was bringing me a gallon every other day,” he told me. “I’m sorry, but when you’re used to having clean, fresh water, that’s what you want. And that’s what this is all about: keeping the cool, clean fresh water flowing. I hope it will be there for many years to come. “I hope it wasn’t all in vain.”
