Summers in south Texas have two temperatures: hot and where’s-the-nearest-walk-in-freezer hot. An hour southwest of Austin is a swimming hole that’s been calling the overheated to its cold waters for hundreds of years.
Jacob’s Well, located in the Jacob’s Well Natural Area, is a naturally-formed swimming hole in Hays County. Scientifically speaking, it’s a karstic spring, which is often a bowl or cone-shaped spring, usually at the end of a cave system, that has large discharge. Jacob’s Well, fed by the Trinity Aquifer, at the time of writing in June, was flowing into Cypress Creek at the rate of 16 gallons a second. In 1924, before modern development (and the subsequent tapping of the Trinity Aquifer) the spring had a measured flow of 170 gallons a second.
