Log Discovery Points to Early Water System

For the past year, Max Mellott has diligently researched the history of Leesburg's water and sewer system, spending hours at Thomas Balch Library flipping through old newspaper clippings and 19th-century handwritten notes from Town Council meetings.

Mellott is assistant superintendent of Leesburg's Utility Maintenance Division and a local history buff. It's in the latter role that he has slowly been piecing together a chronology of Leesburg's utilities upgrades.

"There's evidence that there was a water system of sorts going back to the [early] 1800s," he said.

In July, that evidence came to life with the discovery of an eight-foot-long hollow log once used to pipe water.

A contractor stumbled upon the log as he was cleaning and restoring a pond on a sprawling property along Dry Mill Road and Loudoun Street.

John Cook, the property owner, said he thought the piece of wood might have historical value and notified the utility division.

The log pipe was the exclamation point to Mellott's research.

"Lo and behold, when they were out there doing that excavating work, here that thing rolls out," he said. "It was almost like striking gold."

Leesburg used a wooden pipe system during most of the 19th century, the first technological breakthrough that reduced the town's reliance on wells.

The pipes brought water to the downtown area from two springs once on Cook's land. Water flowed into wooden pumps, hydrants and cisterns that were used for firefighting.

The log was found two feet underground, submerged in a heap of mud that helped keep it intact. Mellott has traced it to a utility system installed in the early 1800s.

"It's hard to imagine anything to lay in the ground that long and not fall apart," Mellott said.