Restoring Jacob's Well: Cypress Creek Hydrologic Restoration

Jacob's Well, the iconic artesian spring in Wimberley, Texas, is dying. Once a perennial swimming hole fed by the Trinity Aquifer through the Cypress Creek watershed, it now fails to flow reliably — a casualty of accelerating groundwater depletion, land-use change, and impervious cover that has progressively severed the watershed's natural hydrologic cycle.

This proposal seeks funding to conduct a science-based feasibility study of large-scale hydrologic restoration in the Cypress Creek watershed. Drawing on proven regenerative land practices — including process-based stream restoration, low-tech riparian interventions (beaver mimicry), soil carbon-water cycle integration, and nature-based infiltration enhancement — the study will map the watershed's current condition, identify optimal implementation sites, and produce a landowner-facing value proposition to catalyze voluntary uptake. Results will seed a broader stakeholder and funding campaign aimed at watershed-scale action.

Weaving the initiative together across all of its partners and constituents is the Balcones Tejas Bioregional Club — an informal civic network of scientists, landowners, water managers, and community members rooted in the Balcones Escarpment and its living systems. The Club is the relational engine of this project: it convened the conversations that generated this proposal, it holds the relationships with key players across sectors, and it carries the cultural story of Jacob's Well into the broader public life of the region. Restoration at this scale requires not just science and funding but a community that sees itself in the land. The Balcones Tejas Bioregional Club is building that community.