⟁ North Carolina Well Data field records · 2026 survey

North Carolina Well Data · Well logs

North Carolina well logs

Every time a well is drilled in North Carolina, the driller files a completion report — the well log — with well construction records (Form GW-1) filed with NC DEQ's Division of Water Resources, together with the USGS National Water Information System groundwater inventory. We hold 211,712 of them and rebuild this index weekly, so you can find one by address instead of by record number.

✓ Verified against NC DEQ + USGS · 2026-10-12

211,712well logs indexed
100counties covered
1850–2026oldest to newest log on file
63,733link to the original filed log
Find the well logs near an address

Well logs are filed by location, not by house number. Enter any North Carolina address and we'll pull the recorded wells around it — Most North Carolina well records are located from the well's street address or the driller's reported coordinates rather than a surveyed wellhead, so results show the wells around a location rather than a single wellhead.

Free address lookup Full property report — $49

What's in a North Carolina well log

Not every filed report carries every field — older logs are thinner, and what the state captured changed over the decades. This is the actual coverage across all 211,712 records, so you know what to expect before you look anything up.

FieldWhat it tells youRecords with itCoverage
Total depth How deep the hole was drilled, in feet. 211,056 (100%)
Date completed When the well was finished and the log filed. 202,123 (95%)
Tested yield Gallons per minute the well produced on the driller’s pump test. 178,035 (84%)
Static water level How far below the surface the water stood at rest. 169,941 (80%)
Mapped location Coordinates, so the log can be found by address instead of by record number. 79,037 (37%)
Original log document A direct link to the NC DEQ + USGS copy of the filed log itself. 63,733 (30%)
Street address A street address on the filed report (varies a lot by state and era). 56,149 (27%)
Driller The licensed company that drilled the well and signed the log. 40,846 (19%)

When North Carolina's wells were drilled

Dated logs by decade of completion (202,123 of 211,712 records carry a usable completion date). The shape of this chart is mostly the history of the filing requirement, not of drilling — thin early decades mean the logs weren't kept, not that nobody drilled.

DecadeLogs filed
1850s 1
1890s 2
1900s 10
1910s 50
1920s 78
1930s 156
1940s 277
1950s 445
1960s 415
1970s 678
1980s 10,874
1990s 15,489
2000s 89,855
2010s 48,359
2020s 35,434

Three ways to find a well log here

  1. By address — the free lookup maps an address to the wells recorded around it. This is what most people want: "how deep is the well on the place I'm buying."
  2. By county — each county page carries the median depth, water level and yield computed from every log filed there, plus the drillers working it.
  3. By driller — every log names the company that drilled the well, so the 227 North Carolina drillers in our directory each have a profile built from their own filed logs.

Well logs by county

Wake County 15,605 logs · median 260 ft Buncombe County 8,628 logs · median 305 ft Rowan County 7,872 logs · median 225 ft Iredell County 6,284 logs · median 301 ft Union County 5,516 logs · median 280 ft Rutherford County 5,225 logs · median 285 ft Orange County 4,544 logs · median 245 ft Macon County 4,538 logs · median 375 ft Watauga County 4,526 logs · median 400 ft Henderson County 4,340 logs · median 325 ft Catawba County 4,219 logs · median 265 ft Nash County 4,038 logs · median 185 ft

See all 100 North Carolina counties →

Where these records come from

All of it is public record from the well construction records (GW-1) filed with NC DEQ's Division of Water Resources, together with the groundwater wells the U.S. Geological Survey has inventoried in North Carolina (edocs.deq.nc.gov/WaterResources/Browse.aspx?id=256243&dbid=0&repo=WaterResources). We don't hold anything the state doesn't publish. More on that database and what a filed record carries: NC DEQ + USGS well records. What we add is that the records are indexed by location, the statistics are computed the same way in every county, and the whole thing is refreshed weekly. Our filters and the exact computation are on the methodology page (statistics use NC DEQ GW-1 well construction records plus the USGS NWIS inventory, water-supply wells only (monitoring, recovery, injection, remediation and geothermal wells excluded; untyped legacy records kept only with a yield or 50+ ft depth), and USGS rows that duplicate a GW-1 record removed).

Common questions

Are North Carolina well logs public records?

Yes. North Carolina drillers are required to file a completion report for each well, and those reports are kept by well construction records (Form GW-1) filed with NC DEQ's Division of Water Resources, together with the USGS National Water Information System groundwater inventory. Anyone can look them up. This site is an independent index of that public record — we re-read the source and recompute every page weekly.

How do I find the well log for my property?

Well logs are filed by location, not by street address, so you search the map rather than a house number. Enter the address on our free lookup and you'll see the recorded wells around that spot — Most North Carolina well records are located from the well's street address or the driller's reported coordinates rather than a surveyed wellhead, so results show the wells around a location rather than a single wellhead. Each one shows its depth, static water level, tested yield, and a link to the original filed log.

How far back do the records go?

The oldest dated log in our copy was completed in 1850; the newest is from 2026. Coverage thins out the further back you go — older wells were often never filed, and filing requirements tightened over time.

Why can't I find a log for my well?

Most likely it was never filed. Wells drilled before the state's reporting requirement — and hand-dug or unpermitted wells — have no log at all. It also happens that a log exists but its recorded location is off, in which case it will show up under a neighboring property. Neither is something we can fix from the source data, and we'd rather say so than invent a record.

What does a well log actually tell you?

The useful parts for a buyer or a homeowner: how deep the well is, how high the water stands in it, how many gallons per minute it produced when tested, what the driller hit on the way down, and who drilled it. Together those say whether the well is likely to keep producing and what a replacement would cost.

Need every log near one property, in one document?

The property report pulls every recorded well near an address — depths, water levels, yields, drillers , and links to each original filed log — as one printable summary for due diligence.

Property report — $49

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