Faith in the water: Minnesota dowser in demand despite no scientific proof
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In every corner of Minnesota, there are good stories waiting to be told of places that make our state great and people who in Walt Whitman’s words “contribute a verse” each day. MPR News sent longtime reporter Dan Gunderson on a mission to capture those stories as part of a series called “Wander & Wonder: Exploring Minnesota’s unexpected places.”
Jim Kuebelbeck walks slowly across a wooded hillside holding a wishbone-shaped fiberglass dowsing rod tightly in his upturned hands. Intense concentration is reflected in his face as he crunches through a thick layer of last year’s fallen leaves.
"We got something here, I don't know, we'll find out,” he says, stopping briefly while his wife Carol jabs a small pink marking flag into the ground.
Kuebelbeck is dowsing, finding a prime spot for the property owner to drill a well before building a home on this property near St. Joseph. He identifies two spots where he is sure the well driller will find a good water supply.
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"How about that? How lucky can we get here today," he said.
Kuebelbeck is 86. He's been water dowsing for more than 50 years and claims to have located more than 3,000 successful wells.
The rods he carries don't dramatically dip toward the ground when he finds water. They're just a prop, something to help him concentrate.
"I can walk around all day and never sense underground water until I concentrate on it," he explains.
"I feel it more inside than anything. When I concentrate on underground water flows, something triggers a neuromuscular reaction in my body,” he says. “And if you can tell me why, I'd sure like to know."
To be clear, science does not support dowsing to find water. Studies have shown dowsing is no better than random chance.
The U.S. Geological Survey says dowsers are successful because in most areas water is so prevalent it would be hard to drill a well and not find water.
The National Groundwater Association, a trade group for well drillers, “strongly opposes” the practice of dowsing, calling it “totally without scientific merit.”
That doesn’t bother Kuebelbeck, and he doesn’t try to explain what he does.
"It's not emanations from the earth. It's not radiation. It's not reflected moonlight, or whatever people think," he says with a chuckle. "There's no scientific test for proving it, so the only test I have is the results. And I'm OK with that.”
Jen Burg is convinced. She’s building a home on this rural property and she hired Kuebelbeck at the request of the well driller. She has faith in his ability to find a good water supply and is happy to pay the fee. Kuebelbeck charges a $300 base fee, plus travel costs.
The central Minnesota well drilling company confirmed they recommend Kuebelbeck to customers.
Kuebelbeck first got interested in dowsing as a teenage skeptic.
A local priest from St. Joseph had a reputation for finding water wells.
"And I thought, yeah, right,” recalled Kuebelbeck. “We live in a Catholic community. Nobody wants to badmouth the priest, so they're embellishing all these stories. So, my initial intent was to prove that this was nonsense."
He went to local farms where the priest reportedly found water to see if he could sense a difference between a dry well and a successful well, and eventually he noticed a sensation he believed was related to underground water.
But he wasn't confident in his ability. Then in 1970 his mother called. A relative had drilled a dry well.
"And she says, ‘You're going to go out there and tell them where to find the water,’” Kuebelbeck recalled. “And I said, ‘The hell I am mom. I'm not going to tell anybody where to spend money.’”
His mom won that argument.
He went to the property and identified a spot where the well driller found water. He says after that, the calls started coming and he’s been dowsing ever since.
His wife Carol was initially a skeptic. Now she’s his biggest supporter and a partner in the business.
"It's a talent. It's a gift from God, I would say," she says as she watches Kuebelbeck work.
The couple ran a dairy delivery business in St. Joseph for 40 years. Now, dowsing is what they do and they have no plans to retire.
"We both enjoy it, and we get to meet a lot of nice people,” said Kuebelbeck. “It's pretty satisfying to get these calls that say, ‘You saved our farm.’ I guess that's why we keep doing it.”
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