Water Supply
Getting water to Monticello's mountaintop was a persistent challenge. A well dug through 65 feet of rock failed repeatedly, leading Jefferson to add rainwater cisterns in 1808 — an imperfect solution that took years to refine.
Photographic image of a cistern water pump at Monticello; (c) Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
The water supply at Monticello was a constant struggle for those living on the mountaintop. In 1769, when construction began on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson directed a crew of enslaved workmen to dig a well near the South Pavilion. The men spent 46 days digging through 65 feet of rock.1 Dry weather conditions, however, caused the well to fail for six of the years between 1769 and 1797.2 Whenever the well ran dry, enslaved laborers had to cart water up from springs lower down on the mountain.3
In 1808, Jefferson ordered construction of four eight-foot-cube cisterns.4 The cisterns were positioned near the house to capture rainwater running off the roofs and terraces.5 Work on the new project began in 1810, but it took many years of trial and error to create a waterproof plaster before the cisterns held rainwater — and even then, it was never a perfect system.6
- Monticello Library Staff, 2011; video added 2017; podcast added 2023.
Further Sources
- Betts, Edwin M., ed. Thomas Jefferson's Garden Book, 1766-1824: With Relevant Extracts from His Other Writings. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1944 (reprint edition, Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc., 1999).
- 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.
Footnotes
- Betts, Garden Book, 17, 283n2.
- Thomas Jefferson, 1776-1818, Weather Record, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. Jefferson's notes concerning the water supply in the well are available online. Transcription available in Betts, Garden Book, 629.
- Weather Record, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. Jefferson's record of temperatures at Monticello's fifteen springs is available online. Transcription available in Betts, Garden Book, 630.
- Weather Record, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. Jefferson's calculation on cisterns is available online. Transcription available in Betts, Garden Book, 630-31.
- See Jefferson to James Dinsmore, November 7, 1808, Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts, Massachusetts Historical Society. Transcription available at Founders Online.
- See Jefferson to John Brockenbrough, June 4, 1823, Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress. Polygraph copy available online. Transcription available at Founders Online.
