It’ll take a lot of change for one of the most iconic watering holes in Texas to reopen to swimming

Jacob’s Well is an earthly wonder so stunning that it looks almost otherworldly: Crystal-clear water with bright green algae in what appears to be a bottomless hole in the limestone.

“When it’s clear like this, you can look down and you can see about 25 feet down. And from that, it’ll continue to kind of angle to a depth of about 150 feet. And then that cavern runs, it’s been mapped almost a mile to the Northwest,” Hays County Parks and Natural Resources Director Karl Flocke said.

The Wimberley water hole may top others across the state in pure beauty. But if you’re looking to dive in to escape the summer heat, you’ll have to look elsewhere. It’s been closed to swimming for the past four summers.

Jacob’s Well as it looks after recent flooding in July. Laura Rice / Texas Standard

The water at Jacob’s Well comes straight out of the Trinity Aquifer.

“It is really fascinating to think about how water can actually push out of the ground — not just lazily flow out, seep out, but it is being forced out of this aquifer, which is a really, really fascinating feature that we have here,” Flocke said.

The ebb and flow

But when the flow slows down, or stops altogether, the water recedes into the hole. No one thought that would ever happen. But it did for the first time on record in the year 2000.

“It did that again in the droughts of the late 2000s and then, of course, in the big 2011 time period drought,” Flocke said.

Flows returned when rain did and so did swimming — until 2022.

“That’s when we dropped down to zero flow and for four years now we’ve been essentially at zero flow,” Flocke said. “So we went from long periods of flow with isolated times of no flow to now it’s the reverse where it is long periods without any water at all and small periods of water.”

After July’s heavy rain, the flow picked up again. It was coming out very briefly at about 22 cubic feet per second.

“A cubic foot is approximately as much water as you could contain within a basketball,” Flocke said.

That rate was well above what’s considered normal flow for Jacob’s Well. Normal would be about 4 to 6 cubic feet per second. 

By early August, that flow had gone down to far back below normal. Still, the brief influx was enough to bring the well’s level not just to the top of the hole, but up out of it — filling up the pool area and going down the rocky Cypress Creek bed.

“It is really encouraging to see the water be flowing out of the well, out of ground here downstream,” Flocke said. “It creates a conduit where fish can swim up and down the stream. They’ve been trapped in puddles for summers upon summers now.”

For a time, it looked ready for human swimming, too. But Flocke says not so fast. 

No swimming

Flocke’s office is at Jacob’s Well and he and his staff spend a decent amount of time each day explaining to visitors why they can’t swim.

“It’s just not enough water, we feel,” Flocke said. “We are concerned about when people get in the water, all the oils and things that they are bringing into that system… When that flow is low, it’s not being flushed out, it is not being carried downstream. It is concentrating into the system. That is a direct conduit into our aquifer, and we know it holds many rare species, maybe even endangered species like salamanders, beetles, things like that.”
Still, for many visitors, it’s disappointing to see all the “no swimming” signs.

Janet Dirmeyer was visiting for the first time.

“Grew up in San Antonio, heard about it all my life, and this is the first time I’ve actually made it,” she said. “My friends are here from Houston, and we wanted to make a day trip and do some swimming, because it’s hot. And so it’s really disappointing to see it like this, quite frankly.

Heavy rain, in context

Janet Dirmeyer now lives in Comfort and saw the other side of the July rains that replenished Jacob’s Well — the flooding.

“Oh, it’s been horrible. It’s so devastating. Two years in a row,” Dirmeyer said.

She takes a pragmatic view of the area’s relationship with rainfall.

“If you live in this area, you understand the terrain, and so the terrain is very, very rocky. And so, yes, we’re given to flash floods, but as fast as it floods, it also recedes,” Dirmeyer said. “And so it doesn’t always have a whole lot of time to soak in and really recharge those aquifers and those springs and things. So that’s kind of the frustration. Everybody thinks, yay, we got all this rain, we’ve got all of this water, and a month later we’re in drought again.”

But Flocke says the challenges for Jacob’s Well only begin with weather.

A big shift in water usage

“In order to get back to a sustained historical flow, we’re going to need a period of prolonged rainfall, average/above average rainfall for a long period of time, which is possible, especially looking at the outlook for this winter of a strong El Niño cycle. It is possible we’ll get the rainfall we need to get us there. But if we don’t see changes in water use, we’re never going to be able to sustain that level of flow again,” Flocke said.

Hays County has been one of the fastest-growing in the country over the past decade or so.

“There are fundamental things at the regional level that we need to look more at, such as where we’re sourcing water supplies, can we get more folks utilizing rainwater collection and rainwater as a water supply — things like that,” Flocke said. “There will need to be some big shifts like that.”

The future of Jacob’s Well

Some folks have wondered if it’s even worth it — if it’d be better for Jacob’s Well and the creatures who call it home to just say “no more swimming, ever.”

But that’s not how Flocke sees it.

“I grew up as a kid swimming in Jacob’s Well and I would love to have that opportunity for the people around here, the people of Texas, the world, again,” Flocke said. “For my children to have that opportunity.”

His kids are young enough that swimming has never been open here in their lifetimes — but Flocke’s hopeful.

“Just simply providing the really phenomenal experience of getting to swim in those cold, crystal clear waters,” he said.

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