What lives in Jacobs well?

There are no bats, of course, but there are catfish, perch, turtles – at the beginning of the cave – and then deep in, there are blind Texas salamanders to keep you company. You can't scuba dive there without a special permit from Hays County, and the only entity that has one is the Jacob's Well Exploration Project.



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Temperature of the water in Jacob's Well remains a near-constant 68°F and visibility is typically excellent. The spring provides habitat to numerous species of fish (principally sunfish and perch); turtles; aquatic insects; crustaceans; and, most notably, the cave-adapted Fern Bank salamander (Eurycea pterophilia).

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About Jacob's Well The settlers didn't dive into it, of course, but treated it instead as a drinking fountain and later used it to power a saw mill. They named it Jacob's Well because of its biblical magnificence. Since the well was discovered, at least 4,500 feet of it has been explored.

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After about a dozen divers drowned trying to explore the bottom of Jacob's Well, the fourth chamber was finally sealed up for good.

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For the second year in a row, the iconic spring-fed swimming hole has stopped flowing, the consequence of drought and overpumping. It was a scorching day in July 2022 when I last peered into Jacob's Well. In a sense, I had come to pay my respects.

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But it's exactly this paradise, and all who come here to enjoy it, that's strain-ing Jacob's Well. “The problem is population growth, plus drought,” says Linda Kaye Rogers, the board president of the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District.

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Photini Church, a Greek Orthodox church located in Nablus, Palestine. The church is built over Jacob's Well. The well is in the lower crypt of the church.

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