Difficulty Drilling Well Holds Up Detention Home for Women, April 1, 1922

Well Delaying Home Opening. . . Detention Home in County Awaits Provision of Water for Premises

The difficulty of boring through a layer of solid rock to a vein of water is preventing Charlotte’s and Mecklenburg County’s latest eleemosynary institution from opening. For weeks the Detention Home for Women on the County Home plantation, nine miles from Charlotte, has been completed and is ready to open with the exception that the well at the home has not been completed and there is no water supply. Every room is to have hot and cold water in it.

J.A. Haley, the contractor who is engaged in boring the well, has been on the job for some time but its not near the end of his task yet, so far as he can be told. It is said there are more rocks to the square yard on the County Home plantation than anywhere else in the county. This feature of the plantation was remarked on by the several delegations that visited the place last Summer when there was an agitation on for improvements of conditions at the home.

Soon after Mr. Haley began boring the well at the Detention Home he struck layer of rock Well drillers in this part of the country expect nothing else than that experience and as long as it is soldi rock they have no trouble. It is when the solid rock is shot through with layers of seams of soft rock that they are hampered. Such has been the case in the well at the Detention Home.

A soft layer of rock has been encountered now and then, requiring extra time to change the method of boring, wash the fragments out of the shaft and proceed to boring again. Now, however, the contractor believes he has struck a thick layer of solid rock and that when he has driven through that he will reach a vein of water and that will meet the requirements of the home.

The home has 25 rooms and is handsomely constructed brick building, with all appointments modern and up-to-date. There are quarters for a superintendent and help, a laundry, and other features. The building stands on an attractive location some distance away from the County Home grounds.

The board of governors composed of city and county officials and others, has not placed the furniture and equipment in the home pending completion of the well and the placing of a caretaker in charge of the building.

From The Charlotte News, Saturday, April 1, 1922