Inside the Well: The Midland, Texas Rescue of Baby Jessica

On October 14, 1987, eighteen-month-old Jessica McClure fell into a well, igniting a 56-hour sprint to free her.

The oil boomtown of Midland, Texas, supplied a ragtag crew of rescuers. Firemen, policemen, roofing contractors, oil drillers, mining engineers, cowpokes, and nosy neighbors all worked together, improvising their way to the story’s happy conclusion: when paramedics hoisted Baby Jessica into the limelight.

Also on the scene was fourth-grader Lance Lunsford, who craned his neck over the fence to try to watch the events unfold. There was a lot to see. Every major news station?local, regional, national, and even global?was represented. CNN inaugurated 24-hour reporting, birthing the round-the-clock disaster coverage commonplace on cable news today.

Later in life as a reporter for the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Lunsford was writing a retrospective on the rescue when he realized that much of the story had not yet been told.

Lunsford’s gripping firsthand narrative documents not just the play-by-play action of the rescue itself but also the lives of the rescuers, their triumph, and, for some, their ultimate tragedy. Bolstered by recollection, exclusive interviews, and deep local knowledge, Inside the Well is the definitive book on a West Texas story that became a twentieth-century media phenomenon.