Adam Courtwight’s spring house on Martin Road in Aleppo Township is beautifully made and has had its share of people stopping by to take its photo. I did it myself last spring while taking a country drive to see the first wild flowers. It had a wreath on the door and every detail showed the hands of fine craftsmanship – old horseshoes reshaped as latches, every bit of joinery done just right. It made me happy to know that someone would take the time to honor the past by building a genuine old time spring house and setting a tub to catch the water that teams of horses would have drunk a hundred years ago.
It was the perfect once-seen never-forgotten roadside artifact to put in last month’s GreeneScene Contest. Martin Road is way off the beaten path for many readers but readers still sent in the correct answer and took their chance at winning $100.
What can’t be seen in this photo is the massive waterwheel that Adam and his brothers built last year, starting a few weeks after I took my photo of the spring house. It sits below the road and harnesses the power of this spring to produce future electricity for the family.
Truth be told, this is one heck of a spring, a spring that never runs dry.
Standing in Adam’s front yard where the giant wooden wheel towers up to meet the overshot chute and feeling the force of the water tumbling down, I can believe it when he tells me an Alliance water consultant clocked it as producing 130,000 gallons of water a day.
Neighbors have always come by for spring water when their wells go dry in the summer and 
Adam grew up watching and wondering where all that water comes from. “The spring was my inspiration.” Being a spiritual man, Adam wasn’t surprised to find that it filled him with joy to get to work on his first project – building a proper spring house with a 300 gallon holding tank inside. But it was the photograph that his sister Millie gave him of a rustic water wheel and mill house beside a winter stream that convinced him to take his spiritual inspiration to that next level.
“I priced them on the Internet, but the one I wanted cost $30,000. So I decided to build it myself.”
Adam checked out the designs Fritz Water Works Company uses, did his research and got to work on the project of a lifetime. Brothers Wilbur, Dean, Fred and Jacob came onboard and some neighbors and friends stopped by to help out. There were forms to be built for the concrete walls and wood to be bought for the wheel. Adam, a certified welder and steamfitter, fabricated the metal axle and fittings and shopped locally at Wayne Lumber and Hoys Concrete for building materials and the concrete pour.
In the end, Adam is happy to say he has about $1,200 in materials and a lot of family sweat equity to give thanks for. The spring on the farm that parents Roger and Blanche Courtwright bought for their children is still flowing strong and the family asks me to end this story with the words their mother Blanche (1928-2013) ended the stories she submitted to the Christian Guild, local newspapers and even the Readers Digest over the years. On April 21 she would have been 93. “Day comes to an end but love goes on forever.” Happy Birthday Blanche!
