were now green circles, perfect green circles a/4 mile across, fed by underground water pumped through aluminum pipes by diesel engines running day and night. Corn everywhere. Corn, irrigated corn, yielding 130, 140, 150 bushels an acre. The grain elevator and Hawky had to build a new storage bin. The JD dealership sold more equipment in 1974 than in the previous 10 years combined. Land that had been worth $80 an acre in 1970 was selling for 300 by 1976 was selling for 300 by 1976.
Once Sheridan County was booming, the water was flowing. The money was rolling in and everyone, the farmers, the banker, the JD dealer, the county agent, looked at Alvin Ducker’s 320 acres of dryland wheat and shook their heads. Old Alvin’s going to die broke on dry ground, they said at the co-op. Stubborn old man won’t take free money. The JD dealer, a man named Lyall Gunderson, put it more bluntly. He was standing in his showroom full of new four-wheel drive tractors and center pivot parts when someone mentioned Alvin’s name.
Alvin Ducker is farming like it’s 1935. Lyall said dryland wheat, no irrigation, no new equipment. Driving a farm all that’s older than his grandkids. The man’s a museum piece. In 5 years he’ll be bankrupt and I’ll be selling his land to someone who knows what to do with it. That was 1974. Remember that year? Remember what Lyall Gunderson said? Because we’re going to come back to it. Path two. Alvin Ducker. The morning after that community center meeting, Alvin drove his farm all H to the northeast corner of his property, the lowest point on his 320
acres, where a shallow draw collected rainwater in the spring, and the grass stayed green a week longer than anywhere else. He’d been watching that spot for 39 years. He knew what it meant. Somewhere below that draw, the water table was closer to the surface than anywhere else on his land. Not the Ogalala. The Ogalala was 150 ft down. This was something shallower, a perched water table fed by local rainfall, sitting in a layer of gravel and sand maybe 40 or 50 ft below the surface.
It wasn’t the Ogalala. It wasn’t an ocean of water. It was a creek compared to a river, but it was his. Alvin started digging, not with a drilling rig. He couldn’t afford one, and he didn’t trust them anyway. A drilling rig punched through everything. Gravel, sand, clay, rock, without telling you what it was going through. Alvin wanted to know every inch of what was under his ground. He dug by hand, shovel, pickaxe, and a bucket on a rope 4t in diameter straight down.
He lined the walls with field stone as he went. Stones he’d been pulling out of his fields for 39 years and piling along the fence rows. It took him 4 months. He dug in the mornings before the heat, and again in the evenings, when the shadow of the windmill reached the hole. 61 years old, lean as wire, standing at the bottom of a shaft that got deeper every day, filling a bucket with dirt and hauling it up with a hand winch.
His neighbors drove past and stared. Some stopped. “Alvin, what in God’s name are you doing? Digging a well by hand? That’s right. The government will put in a center pivot for $35,000 on a 20-year loan at 4%. ” And you’re digging a hole in the ground with a shovel. That’s right. You’re out of your mind. Maybe. At 37 ft, Alvin hit gravel. Wet gravel. The water seeped in slowly at first. A puddle at the bottom of the shaft, then an inch, then 2 in.
By the time he dug to 42 ft, the water was rising faster than he could bail. He’d found it. He lined the bottom with more field stone, installed a hand pump, and later added a small windmill pump that he built from salvaged parts. An old air motor frame, new sucker rod, leather cups he cut himself. Total cost of Alvin Ducker’s well, about $300 in materials, plus 4 months of his own labor. The well produced 8 gall per minute.
Not much. A center pivot used 800. But Alvin didn’t need 800 gall minute. He wasn’t growing irrigated corn. He was growing dryland wheat, a crop that needed rain, not pipes. The well was for his house, his livestock, and his garden, and for one other thing that nobody understood at the time, insurance. “What do you mean insurance?” His wife Mabel asked him. “Someday,” Alvin said. “The big water is going to run out. When it does, this little water is going to be the most valuable thing in the county.” Mabel looked at the well, looked at the windmill, and looked at her husband.
You’re either the smartest man in Kansas or the craziest, she said. Might be both. Alvin said. Now, let me tell you about the next 15 years. Because this is where the two paths start to diverge slowly at first, then all at once. 1972 through 1978, the boom years. Irrigated farmers in Sheridan County were making more money than they’d ever seen. Corn prices were high. Yields were high. Everyone expanded. More pivots, more acres, more loans. Land prices climbed from $80 to $300 to $500 an acre.
