The Sandy Spring EarthCache

Wheelchair users may have to pop a wheelie to get up onto the trail from the closest parking, or scout around for an access point. Then it's smooth rolling to the site!

Note: no "armchair caching", please: we believe a player must visit a cache site in person in order for it to count as a find.

Sand Springs really does have a sandy spring!

The water in the Arkansas River is not fit to drink. Early settlers complained that biscuits made with river water were a muddy pinkish-brown and unpleasantly salty, just like the river. The Arkansas River’s tributaries pick up big loads of salt and silt from upstream (visit the Great Salt Plains, near Alva, Oklahoma

Long before the city of Sand Springs incorporated in 1912, this was known as a good place to stop for fresh water. Washington Irving may have stopped here in 1832; the well-known author was Oklahoma’s first tourist. His journey took him close to the site. The community of Adams was settled at this location in the late 1800s by Tullahassee Creeks. The only evidence of the town today is the cemetery located across the street in the middle of the shopping center parking lot, and the name of the street that crosses Charles Page Boulevard here. The Katy Railroad may have filled its water tanks here. Sand Springs founder Charles Page knew that a good water supply was important for a growing community. In fact, a two-inch pipe carried Sand Springs water to a bottling plant in Tulsa, until Lakes Eucha and Spavinaw and Yahola, and a gravity-fed flowline were built in the 1920s to provide Tulsans with potable water.

So why is the water so good here? Well, the Arkansas River is old. It has meandered back and forth in its bed for thousands of years. Over the years the river has dropped many layers of sand and gravel, hundreds of feet deep. As the river cut down gradually through the layers of bedrock, it left layers of sand and gravel behind on either side, perched on terraces of stone. At one time, these terraces were part of the river bed, but as the main channel of water cut downward, they were left high and “dry.” They are “dry” only in the sense that they are cut off from the main body of the river’s flow.

These alluvial (meaning “river”) terrace deposits have many tiny spaces between the particles of sand and gravel. If there were no solid bottom of bedrock, they would indeed dry out quickly; rain water would run right down through them to drain away into the river, leaving only damp air spaces. If that were the case, Sand Springs would look much more desert-like, and these would be fairly barren gravel and sand dunes. However, the alluvial terraces at Sand Springs are sitting on top of relatively impermeable sandstone and shale, the Nellie Bly Formation. Rain water cannot drain right away to the river, until it finds a way around, across, or over that rock. Meanwhile, it fills up all the air spaces between the sand and gravel particles. The sand and gravel is like a big sponge full of water, sitting on a dish of stone.

You could find a place up on top of the hill where water pooled at the surface after a rain. That’s like the top of the sponge being wet when the whole thing is saturated. But because water flows downward, the bottom of the sponge is the most reliable place to find water. You can drill or dig a well to get down to where the water will be when it hasn’t rained for a while. Or, you can find a place where the bottom of the water-bearing layers (the aquifer) naturally occurs at the surface. That’s on the side of the hill, where the aquifer meets the impermeable rock. The sandy spring occurs at the place where the sand and gravel meet an impermeable rock layer at the outside edge of the hill. At least, it was on the outside of the hill before the four-lane highway was built.

A modern four-lane highway covered over the original sandy spring, but a pipe still carries the fresh clear water out to an open pavilion. Water cress, which is finicky about its growing conditions, is abundant. Come at night, and shine a flashlight into the spring water to see crawdads and other abundant aquatic life.

Although the presence of water cress and a thriving ecosystem of aquatic life argues in favor of its high quality, do not drink the water here. It has not been tested for the presence of E. coli bacteria in the spring water. There are no safe levels of this bacterium because it indicates the presence of fecal material in the water. That disease-causing material could come from the surface, trickling downward to contaminate the groundwater, or it could move laterally through the aquifer. It is a matter of life and death to protect a watershed, the ground that collects one’s drinking water. (Kinda makes one wonder why there is a large manhole marked "SEWER" next to this beautiful, bubbling water source. You'd think a sewer line would be located a little farther away from a place like this...)

Also, during the late 20th century, a microscopic aquatic organism called Giardia (zhee-ARE-dee-uh) became widespread throughout North America. It has been carried into remote wilderness areas by wild mammals (hence the nickname “beaver fever”), and occasionally on to public drinking fountains by raccoons and squirrels. A human probably will not die from drinking water contaminated with Giardia, but those who have hosted the unpleasant visitors in their small intestines often declare that dying might be easier than the extreme diarrhea and other nasty symptoms. Even apparently pure spring water must be treated now, by filtering to an absolute pore size of 0.1 microns or smaller, or boiling at a rolling boil for 1 minute, or chemical purification. An open water source where ‘coons and ‘possums could splash around, as well as unwashed humanity, is not safe to drink from any more.

Springs are often classified by the volume of the water they discharge. The largest springs are called "first-magnitude," defined as springs that discharge water at a rate of at least 2800 L/s. The scale for spring flow is as follows:

To log this find: 1) Take a photo of yourself or your GPS receiver at the Sandy Spring, and upload the image to your log. 2) Estimate the Sandy Spring’s magnitude based on the amount of flow you find at the time of your visit. Email us this estimate; do not post it in your log, please. 3) Tell us if you believe this spring to be a perennial source (a year-round flow of water), or an ephemeral source (an intermittent spring that only flows after abundant rain.) 4) Please include in your email how many people visited the Sandy Spring in your party.

Where does the City of Sand Springs get its water now?
“The City of Sand Springs treats and provides drinking water to 11,500 customers within a 150 square-mile service area, with approximately 4,500 of those customers residing outside of the City limits. The City draws most of its raw water from Skiatook Lake through a joint operating agreement with the City of Sapulpa. Shell Creek Lake serves as a secondary source of raw water. Unlike most cities in the Tulsa area, Sand Springs has its own water supply and treatment facilities and is not reliant on another municipality or entity for such a vital utility.”
-quoted from City of Sand Springs website