For academic and institutional researchers
DrillerDBResearch Program
Free record-level access to 18 million+ water well records across the United States and Canada for non-commercial research, including 53,064,222 lithology intervals extracted from drillers' logs and standardized to one controlled vocabulary. Depth, static water level, yield, and construction details, compiled from state and provincial well-construction reports. Apply with a short form and a one-page data use agreement.
01 / Well records
15,927,881 filed reports mapped (continental US)
The key layer
Lithology, standardized
State archives describe the ground the way drillers wrote it down: scanned forms, local shorthand, “blue slate” in one county and “br. clay & gvl” in the next. Readable one log at a time, unusable at scale. DrillerDB extracts those logs, including handwritten and scanned reports, and codes every interval to one controlled lithology vocabulary: primary and secondary lithology, color, grain size, depth range, and a confidence score on each row.
That layer is what no state portal provides: intervals comparable across county and state lines, delivered as plain CSV alongside the well records they came from.
Most common coded lithologies
As filed by the driller
As delivered to you
| top_ft | bot_ft | litho_code | color | conf |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 | 102 | Shale | red | 0.90 |
| 30 | 605 | Shale | blue | 0.95 |
| 0 | 195 | Clay | red | 0.95 |
Real rows from the coding pipeline, shown verbatim.
Sixty seconds, two geologies
The ground, in section
The film cuts the earth open in Colorado's Denver Basin and Wisconsin's Driftless Area — 1,213 km apart — to show one dataset reading two very different geologies in the same vocabulary. Every point of light is a real well record; every well column is a real logged well.
The dataset
Every record is a filed well-construction report, not a model. The public site shows aggregates; the research program opens the record level, scoped to your study area.
Published state data hubs (free, aggregate, no login)
The full database reaches well beyond these six states, including Canadian provincial records. If your study area is not listed, ask - coverage varies by state reporting program, and we will tell you plainly what we hold for your region before you commit to anything.
What it supports
Hydrogeology
Depth-to-water and yield across real wells, at a density state observation networks do not reach.
Groundwater depletion
Static water levels with drill dates, so level changes can be tracked across decades of records.
Drought and climate
County-level water table behavior to pair with precipitation, drought indices, and climate models.
Aquifer characterization
Lithology logs and formation picks from drillers' reports, mappable across county and state lines.
Water quality and public health
Well construction, depth, and age for private-well populations that public-supply data misses.
Well economics and policy
Construction patterns over time for permitting, infrastructure, and rural water policy questions.
How it works
Send a short application
Tell us who you are, your institution, your research purpose, and the data scope you need (states or counties, fields, date range). Use the form below, or email craig@drillerdb.com if you prefer. We respond within 5 business days.
Sign a one-page agreement
A short data use agreement: non-commercial use, DrillerDB attribution in anything you publish, no redistribution of the raw data. Written to be signable without a legal department.
Receive your export
A scoped CSV extract matched to your approved request, with the extract date noted for your methods section. Need a refresh later in the project? Ask.
If you use this data, cite it as
DrillerDB Research Program, DrillerDB. https://drillerdb.com/research (accessed [date]).The citation is the price of admission. It is how the program stays free.
Who qualifies
Faculty, staff, and graduate students at accredited institutions; university extension programs; federal and state agencies; nonprofit research organizations. Student projects need a faculty sponsor on the application.
Commercial use is a different thing and stays separate from this program. If you are a business that needs well data, see pricing or talk to us.
The terms, plainly
Non-commercial research use only. Cite DrillerDB in anything you publish. Do not redistribute the raw data. Well locations are delivered exactly as the state source of record publishes them.
Research Program FAQ
Apply for access
A few sentences is enough - we read every application ourselves and respond within 5 business days.