SAN ANTONIO-Eddie Gutierrez knew about the Blue Hole growing up and heard it referenced in classes at the University of the Incarnate Word.
The San Antonio Express-News reports it was only while visiting the spring on the campus Monday that he saw firsthand how the clear, cold water rises from the depths of the Earth and pours itself across a once-dry streambed.
The Blue Hole "was just some San Antonio lore that you'd hear," he said. "You don't understand the story of what it was."
Since it began flowing again this spring, the Blue Hole has drawn a small but steady stream of visitors. From a parking lot, they cross a bridge over the San Antonio River and follow the path that runs between a gazebo and a sand volleyball pit. They stand around a circular rock wall, roughly 8 feet across, and peer into the depths. Minnows dart in the upper reaches, but the deeper levels fade into darkness.
Once known as part of the San Antonio Springs, the main spring and its confluence with Olmos Creek are considered the headwaters of the San Antonio River, called Yanaguana by the Native Americans present at the time of the Spanish conquest. The Spanish christened the river "San Antonio" 325 years ago Monday.
The springs are flowing again thanks to the heavy rains that recharged the Edwards Aquifer over April and May. The level of the aquifer in the San Antonio Pool reached 686 feet above mean sea level June 6, the highest since 2007. As of Monday, it had dropped 2 feet.
These measurements come from another gateway to the underground water world a little more than 2 miles from the Blue Hole: the J-17 well, which the Edwards Aquifer Authority uses to monitor the pool below San Antonio.
On Monday, EAA hydrogeologist Rob Esquilin opened the metal doors on a small cinder-block shed near Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston. Inside was a table, a set of instruments and a metal pipe sticking out of the floor.
The instruments measure the aquifer's level every 15 minutes, he explained, though the EAA backs this up with manual readings during dry times when pumping by most users has to be restricted. The federal government once managed the J-17 well, whose records go back to the 1930s, he said.
This week marks the anniversary of the highest 10-day average level ever recorded: 703 feet in 1992.
Thanks to human development and pumping of the aquifer, much of what the Blue Hole used to be has been lost. Early visitors often remarked on its clear water bursting forth from the earth like a fountain and the surrounding tapestry of plant and animal life. When landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted visited the spring in 1857, he called it the "first water among the gems of the natural world."
"The whole river gushes up in one sparkling burst from the earth," Olmsted wrote. "It has all the beautiful accompaniments of a smaller spring, moss, pebbles, seclusion, sparkling sunbeams, and dense overhanging luxuriant foliage. The effect is overpowering. It is beyond your possible conceptions of a spring."
But the spring is not dead. On Monday, it inspired poetry after a visit by Lou Taylor, Lois Heger and Patricia Osoria.
The three friends were among those peering into the water. Afterward, they planned a stop at San Pedro Springs Park, where another historical spring has begun flowing again.
"The color is just amazing," Heger said. Last time she was here, the bottom was filled only with "yucky mud," she said. After a previous visit, she wrote a poem about both springs she titled "Yanaguana Whispers."
Helen Ballew, who recently "hung up (her) spurs" after six years as executive director of the Headwaters at Incarnate Word group that manages the preserve, said in an email that she is one of many in the community with strong ties to the spring, especially indigenous groups.
"The springs are sacred to many in our community (and beyond), and I have no doubt many interesting things-rituals, prayers, meditations, celebrations-happen at the Blue Hole that no one ever sees or knows about," she said.