Back to the Future 3 - Water in the Wild West

[Mr.Kobayashi]

Another BttF question, this time about part 3. Marty goes back to 1885 California, and meets his ancestor Seamus McFly who invites him into his house. Seamus offers Marty some water, and produces glasses full of a manky looking yellowy-brown water. I can’t find a decent clip, but you can get a look here. Later when he walks into the bar he asks the barman for some water, but is laughed at and told to go outside to the horse trough if he wants a drink of it.

Seems hard to believe that in 1885 a good drink of water was hard to come by - or that they’d drink the silty looking crap Seamus produces. Surely they’d know how to filter out some impurities, or purify by evaporation? Or is Back to the Future Part III pretty accurate when it comes to depicting thirst in the Wild West?

[Szlater]

This is quite interesting.

Municipal water was slow to arrive in the west, so potable water was actually quite difficult to come by and industrial and agricultural runoff was a major problem. They had reasonably clean water in the East in the 1830-40s.

[CalMeacham]

You evidently didn’t read Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi. I quote from p. 252 of the linked copy:

“Can’t you drink it?”

    "I could if I had some other water to wash it with."

    Here was a thing which had not changed; a score of years had not affected this water's mulatto complexion in the least; a score of centuries would succeed no better, perhaps. It comes out of the turbulent, bank-caving Missouri, and every tumblerful of it holds nearly an acre of land in solution. I got this fact from the bishop of the diocese. If you will let your glass stand half an hour, you can separate the land from the water as easy as Genesis; and then you will find them both good: the one good to eat, the other good to drink. The land is very nourishing, the water is thoroughly wholesome. The one appeases hunger; the other, thirst. But the natives do not take them separately, but together, as nature mixed them. When they find an inch of mud in the bottom of a glass, they stir it up, and then take the draught as they would gruel. It is difficult for a stranger to get used to this batter, but once used to it he will prefer it to water. This is really the case. It is good for steamboating, and good to drink; but it is worthless for all other purposes, except baptizing.

Twain, Mark 1835-1910. "Life on the Mississippi"

It’s a cultural thing – people were used to turbid and muddy water then. You could get clear water if you let it settle, but why bother?
As for the bar – that’s different. Who goes into a bar for water? Bars sell alcogholic drinks (which were less likely to get you sick than water flowing through town). Undoubtedly people had well water and rain barrel water, but you wouldn’t expect to get it in a bar.

[md2000]

Water would come from wells, since obviously river water has a lot of sediment (thanks, Mark) and is very chewy. Well water is the same today as back then - some good, some bad, some ugly. Usually they knew enough to not put the well near a bad location, since whatever washes into it contaminates it for everyone. Sometimes the local water table was not too good. Sometimes they used rainbarrels (less so the more unreliable the precipitation got). Obviously, rainbarrels can collect a lot more interesting things than wells, but then it has time to float or sink.