Water Supply
From Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia
The water supply[1] at Monticello was a constant struggle for Thomas Jefferson and the entire plantation community. In 1769, Jefferson employed a crew of workers who spent forty-six days digging a well through sixty-five feet of rock near the South Pavilion. Even then, from 1769 until 1797, the well went dry for a total of six of those years. There were springs lower down on the mountain, and when the well was dry, water had to be carted up to the mountaintop. Finally, he settled upon the construction of four eight-foot-cube cisterns up near the house that would capture rainwater running off the roofs and terraces of the house. Work for those started in 1810, but it was many years of trial and error in creating a waterproof plaster before they held rainwater--and even then, it was never a perfect system.
Footnotes
- ↑ This article is based on Eric Johnson, Thomas Jefferson Foundation email, 2006.
Further Sources
- Betts, GB.
- Betts, Edwin M., Hazlehurst Bolton Perkins, and Peter Hatch. Thomas Jefferson's Flower Garden at Monticello. Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association and University Press of Virginia, 1986, 17-20.
- McLaughlin, Jack. Jefferson and Monticello: the Biography of a Builder New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1988.
