Lu Anne Stephens
/ KMUW
The Big Well Museum stands as a tribute to the spirit of Greensburg, which went from being a typical western Kansas town to being leveled by a tornado to being rebuilt as a truly “green” community. The museum tells the story of the town’s journey.
Greensburg has the distinction of owning the “World’s Largest Hand Dug Well.” The Big Well was built — as advertised — by hand in 1887 and is still considered an engineering marvel for its time. Thirty men, earning 50 cents a day, worked for nine months with pick axes and shovels to create the largest hand-dug well in the world: 32 feet wide, and 109 feet deep.