HUDSONVILLE, Mich. — Finding a hole in the ground in Michigan isn't necessarily anything to get excited about — we are the unofficial capitol of pot holes, after all.
Though, a family in Hudsonville found a hole full of mystery and intrigue when they began noticing a tiny crevice in their driveway begin to open up a few weeks ago.
“I would say, over the last, like, six months, it's kind of sunk a little bit," explained Stacy Cruce, who first noticed the expanding crack.
It wasn't until about two weeks ago that a true hole was visible in the concrete.
"There was a little small rock that had kind of fallen in, and then I removed a smaller piece and was like, 'Oh my gosh,'" Cruce told FOX 17 Tuesday afternoon.
“We've had two main water lines burst in the last, like, three or four years, so I thought that this was possibly from a water line.”
There was something down there, something purposefully built out of bricks, a man-made structure of some sort.
Stacy was certainly going to find out what it was.
She says she called the city of Hudsonville to come out, but they had little insight as to what it was or how to proceed with filling it in.
"I called around, but it seemed like everybody just kind of wanted to see what it was. ... And I thought, well, I can break it apart," Cruce said.
"So being who I am, I just grabbed a Wonderbar hammer."
The family got to smashing away concrete, Stacy's husband and son Josiah joining in on the process.
The family uses an adaptive wheelchair-accessible van for their youngest son who is living with a disability. The hole in their driveway has made using that van, and the ramp they have built on the back of their home, quite difficult.
“I’ve had people ask me, 'Can we come dig in it and see if there's old bottles?' or 'I own an antique company,' and I was like, 'We just want it filled,'” she said.
While they need it filled ASAP, the family was of course still eager to know what exactly that hole contained.
That's where a knowledgable neighbor comes into the story. Les Vandenheuvel has lived in the house right across the street for about 45 years now.
“When I saw the bricks built up, I knew right away what it was,” he told us Tuesday.
He says it is an old dry well — once common on farms, they were used to collect and then divert overflow sewage from nearby septic tanks.
“This was before they did drain fields. They dug a hole in the ground and put bricks all in a big circle, and this was the overflow from septic tanks.”
Vandenheuvel actually built a number of dry wells decades ago as a child, working alongside his father.
“We would get down in the hole and, you know, Dad would hand the bricks to us and we would pile them around.”
Now, years and years later, Stacy's own kids are climbing down into the hole, making memories out of this unique experience.
She has been in touch with some excavating companies, working to nail down the final details for someone to come out and fill the Hudsonville hole up, so they can go on with their lives.
