Built through the winter months and early spring of 1914 by as many as forty men using only pick and shovel, the Westmoreland city water well was reputed to be the second largest hand-dug well in the world. After nearly three quarters of a century of neglect and abuse, during which it was used as a trash dump, the well and about one acre surrounding it were transferred by owner Charles Duncan to the Rock Creek Valley Historical Society for the token price of one dollar. Restored by the Historical Society as a two-year PRIDE project, the cleanup removed a dozen junked automobiles and many dump truck loads of refuse. The well’s casing was built in an unusual way: the wall was laid at ground level with a steel shoe as a base and then lowered by its own weight until it rested on a four-foot-thick limestone stratum at the bottom. The bottom ten feet of the casing are brick, while the rest is native limestone, and two-inch pipes spaced at two-foot intervals around the perimeter extend through the wall to water-bearing gravel strata that supply the basin.