Murrayville Artesian Well — Langley, BC
Posted by: 
Dunbar Loop
N 49° 05.371 W 122° 37.511
10U E 527365 N 5437473
The use of the Murrayville Artesian Well goes back over a 100 years. The village was established a stopping point on the Yale Waggon Road, today's Old Yale Road. Early details of the well are unknown but from 1911 it began to serve the community.
Waymark Code: WMNYFM
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Date Posted: 05/24/2015
Views: 14
In the 1870s the growing population of the Fraser Valley was looking for a winter route to the Fraser River. The river would occasionally freeze up and vessels had a hard time of navigating the ice flows.
Finally the provincial government set out building a wagon road linking Brownsville, opposite New Westminster, to Yale in the Fraser Canyon. This route was originally called the Westminster-Yale Waggon Road.
Murrayville became a logical place along the wagon road for a village to begin growing. At the base of a hill the community had plenty of water flowing from the Hopington aquifer. This included the 1.25 gallons / 5.7 liter per minute flow at the Murrayville Five Corners well.
By 1911 the well owner, Rod Cummings, began to pump water to the nearby Belmont School and the Municipal Hall using a hydraulic ram (1911) and then an electric pump (1928). Today the green shed that is over the wellhead is the 1928 pumphouse. The pump was shut off in 1982 when Belmont School joined onto the municipal water system.
As the area has been increasing urbanized the quality of the water flowing from the Murrayville Artesian Well is questionable. It is no longer tested. However, community folklore still claims that the water collected here makes the best pickles.