The Kootenai herald. [volume] (Kootenai, Idaho) 1891-1904, 1894-01-13
STRUCK A HOT AIR WELL.
VIII Pipe 1t to His House and Utilize 1t
in an Incubator.

VIII Pipe 1t to His House and Utilize IL
in an Incubator.
TOPEKA, Kan, Jan. s.-Be 1t In poll
tics, in religion or in nature, in Kansas
the unusual the freakish is always
happening. The latest wonder is re-
ported from Linn county, near the
Missouri border, and is nothing less
than a hot air well. The story is
verified by A. r. Van Doom, lumber
dealer of Atchison, who was last week
driving from Butler, in Bates county,
Missouri, to LaCyghe, in Linn county.
Just after he had crossed the Missouri
border he came to the farm of John P.
Johnson. The farm lies partly in the
valley of the Marias de Cygnes river
and partly in the upland. The farm
house is located on sort of a second
bench of the valley and stands back
fifty yards from the main travelled road.
AS he approached the house his atten-
tion was called by crowd of men,
women and Children who were gathered
about derrick. The crowd seemed so
greatly interested and excited that
Van Doom and his driver got out of
their buggy and joined it. They
learned that in bearing for water
Johnson had, at depth of ninety feet,
penetrated a cavern to which there
instantly poured steady stream of hot
air, so strong in volume that it was
with difficulty the drill was held down,
and so intense was the heat that the
men at the mouth of the hole were
driven away, and when they released
their hold upon the drill it Immediately
shot upward, disabling the derrick and
other machinery and breaking the gas
pipe which connected it with the drill.
Until the drill was wholly removed
from the mouth of the well the rush of
air caused din of sounds resembling a
myriad of sharp little whistles, and
when the obstruction was removed the
noise resembled the roar of blast
furnace.
The find of this we'll was made Dec.
! IS, but the flow has not for a moment
relaxed in volume or force and the
roar can be distinctly heard a quarter
of a mile away The curiosity attracts
great crowds of farmers and is the talk
of the country round. At first little
vapor was expelled, but this has now
disappeared and the flow comes out dry
and so hot that il tans and even burns
ones hands. Mr.. johnson tested the
heat by securing an egg in a wooden
clamp and holding it in the flow, and II
five minutes it was roasted as wei
done as it could be in bed of hot ashes
Local scientists have visited the scene
and tried to trace the flow to the cur
rent of natural gas that exists in the
adjoining county of Miami, but this
theory is at once dissipated by the fact
that there is no odor nor anything else
in the flow; it comes out as pure as the
air from a hot air furnace. While Mr.
johnson was in search of water wher
he bored the well, he has devised {
plan by which he can put his discovery
to good usd. His house, which is less
than fifty feet away, he proposes t
move more closely to the well and pipt
the air into the various rooms for heat
ing purposes. He is a chicken fancie'
and raises hogs and cattle and he will
also pipe the heat to the chicken house
cattle sheds aud hog pens. In thu
chicken house he proposes to use th'
hot air not only for heating purposes
but will apply it to incubators anC
when he once gets fairly started HI
will have a Matching every day anC
spring chickens the year round
He already has a good trade in live
poultry with the Armours, of Kansa
City, but he will abandon this and con
fine his sales to spring chickens no
only at the Kansas City market, bu
elsewhere where he can find demand.
EDWARDS SAYS HE WAS IN UTAH