Iowa Well Data · Well logs
Iowa well logs
Every time a well is drilled in Iowa, the driller files a completion report — the well log — with the Iowa DNR Well Information System (IWIS). We hold 227,058 of them and rebuild this index weekly, so you can find one by address instead of by record number.
✓ Verified against Iowa DNR · 2026-08-24
Well logs are filed by location, not by house number. Enter any Iowa address and we'll pull the recorded wells around it — Iowa names the county and quarter-section on nearly every well but records a street address on only about one in four, so wells are placed to the parcel or quarter-section rather than an exact wellhead — results show the wells around a location.
Free address lookup Full property report — $29What's in a Iowa 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 227,058 records, so you know what to expect before you look anything up.
| Field | What it tells you | Records with it | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original log document | A direct link to the Iowa DNR copy of the filed log itself. | 227,058 (100%) | |
| Mapped location | Coordinates, so the log can be found by address instead of by record number. | 221,291 (97%) | |
| Total depth | How deep the hole was drilled, in feet. | 209,532 (92%) | |
| Date completed | When the well was finished and the log filed. | 175,439 (77%) | |
| Driller | The licensed company that drilled the well and signed the log. | 164,350 (72%) | |
| Street address | A street address on the filed report (varies a lot by state and era). | 87,235 (38%) |
When Iowa's wells were drilled
Dated logs by decade of completion (175,439 of 227,058 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.
| Decade | Logs filed | |
|---|---|---|
| 1850s | 24 | |
| 1860s | 25 | |
| 1870s | 32 | |
| 1880s | 83 | |
| 1890s | 140 | |
| 1900s | 9,821 | |
| 1910s | 1,318 | |
| 1920s | 3,814 | |
| 1930s | 6,578 | |
| 1940s | 13,406 | |
| 1950s | 31,076 | |
| 1960s | 20,367 | |
| 1970s | 16,679 | |
| 1980s | 10,459 | |
| 1990s | 19,453 | |
| 2000s | 22,430 | |
| 2010s | 12,169 | |
| 2020s | 7,565 |
Three ways to find a well log here
- 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."
- By county — each county page carries the median depth, water level and yield computed from every log filed there, plus the drillers working it.
- By driller — every log names the company that drilled the well, so the 324 Iowa drillers in our directory each have a profile built from their own filed logs.
Well logs by county
Where these records come from
All of it is public record from the well records Iowa drillers file with the Department of Natural Resources (programs.iowadnr.gov/iowawellinformationsystem). We don't hold anything the state doesn't publish. More on that database and what a filed record carries: Iowa DNR 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 Iowa DNR Well Information System records, water-supply wells only (monitoring, test, dewatering, injection and closed-loop geothermal wells excluded); depths 0-5,000 ft).
Common questions
Yes. Iowa drillers are required to file a completion report for each well, and those reports are kept by the Iowa DNR Well Information System (IWIS). 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.
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 — Iowa names the county and quarter-section on nearly every well but records a street address on only about one in four, so wells are placed to the parcel or quarter-section rather than an exact wellhead — results show the wells around a location. Each one shows its depth, static water level, tested yield, and a link to the original filed log.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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