The 1,869 domestic wells on file within 5 miles of Salem, from the state’s drilling logs: your neighbors’ wells, and the best guide to this ground.
Source: ODNR well logs, domestic wells within 5 miles, retrieved 2026-09-30.
The Shallowest Median in Columbiana County
Salem has the shallowest wells of the county’s 21 towns, ranked by median depth. Its logs put the median at 118 feet, below the 135-foot figure for domestic wells in ODNR’s county-wide records, and three in four local wells stopped by 160 feet. A typical new well here needs less footage than most in the county, and footage is a big part of what a new well costs.
Shallow doesn’t mean short of water. Half the logs record 15 gallons per minute or more, and only a quarter 10 or less, so most homes can have a pump sized to the household rather than squeezed to fit the well. Pump system design makes the final choice from the yield measured when drilling ends.
Forty Feet of Soil Before Rock
What Salem’s wells save in depth, they partly give back in casing. Bedrock lies a median 40 feet down, and the middle half of logs found it between 23 and 67 feet, so a quarter of wells needed 67 feet or more before rock. Casing usually runs from the surface through all of that soil and seats in solid rock, so in a shallow well it can be a large share of the job, and it varies from one lot to the next.
Below the soil, the Allegheny and Pottsville Groups are mapped at the town center: shale, siltstone, limestone and sandstone. Residential well drilling covers how a well is drilled, cased and tested. For water quality on a well or on city water, see water treatment in Salem.
