Lost River - Karst Information Portal

Harrison was by far the largest spring visited
in the 1997 reconnaissance. Hunter Spring
near Fredricksburg had the second largest flow.
Leatherwood Island and Harrison Cave Spring
had significant flows, but were much smaller.
Crane is another large spring in the area, but
was not visited in 1997.
Groundwater Basin Delineation
Harrison Spring is the single resurgence
point of what must be a very large groundwater
basin. The area draining directly to the spring
(the groundwater basin) is approximately
known from dye tracer tests that have been
conducted over a period of several years. A
compilation of the test results is shown in
Figure 1. Ehrenzeller (1978) reported the
results of dye tracers from Baker Hollow Cave,
Smokes Swallowhole, and Grandma Davis
Cave, all located on the Mitchell Plateau and
adjacent parts of the Crawford Upland north
and northeast of Harrison Spring. All locations
resurged at Harrison Spring. Earth Tech (1998a)
showed using spectrofluorometric tracing that
a sinkhole at North Harrison High School at
Ramsey drained to Harrison Spring and did
not drain to any other spring in the area. Later,
Earth Tech (2005) performed tracer tests from
two sinkholes adjacent to State Road 64 east
of Ramsey (Figure 1, SH-1 and SH-14), and
these also drained to Harrison Spring. Dye was
not detected in any other monitored spring.
Karst Hydrogeology of the Harrison Spring Area
Table
Estimated Spring Flows – August 1997
Spring Name Location
Estimated
Flow (gpm)
Babcock SE SW SW 36 T2S R2E 30
Carter Byrnes SW NW NE 28 T2S R4E 20
Harrison Cave Spring NE SE NE 19 T3S R3E 100
Harrison Spring SE NW NE 19 T3S R3E 5000
Hunter Spring SE NE SW 19 T3S R3E 2500
Hunter Spring at Milltown NE SE SE 17 T1S R3E 20
Lincoln I NW NE NW 12 T2S R2E 50
Lincoln II SW NE SW12 T2S R2E 50
Leatherwood Island SW NE SW 36 T1S R2E 100
Mott Station SW SE NE 32 T2S R4E 5
The SH-14 tracer traveled a straight line vector
distance of 7.6 miles and is one of the longest
dye traces conducted in Indiana.
Based on these dye traces and surface
watershed boundaries, an approximate
groundwater basin size of 39 square miles that
extends northeast of Harrison Spring between
Blue River and Indian Creek may be inferred.
Within this area virtually all runoff and
infiltration reaches the spring. The spring flow
data suggests the basin area may be larger. The
western boundary of the groundwater basin
is drawn along a topographic divide in the
eastern portion of the Crawford Upland. This
divide runs northeast from Harrison Spring,
between Depauw and Ramsey, and is easily
traceable to a point about 3 miles northeast
of Ramsey (Figure 1). At this point the divide
becomes indistinct across the Mitchell Plateau.
Surface drainage west of this divide occurs in
numerous karst valleys and sinking streams that
are probably tributary to several smaller springs
along the east bank of Blue River.
The groundwater basin boundary, as drawn
in Figure 1, extends about 12 miles from the
spring in the vicinity of Central Barren. In this
area, the northern boundary of the Harrison
Spring groundwater basin is drawn though
an apparent inter-basin area of low sinkhole
density. North of Central Barren toward
Palmyra, dye traces by Earth Tech (1998b) and
the Town of Palmyra indicate subterranean
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