Bob Wade Drilling Co. is a water well drilling contractor based in Bentonville, Arkansas, drilling domestic, farm, irrigation and business wells across Northwest Arkansas.
The company carries the Wade name and works the same ground it calls home: the Springfield Plateau, where red cherty clay sits over Boone limestone and the water moves through fractures, caves and springs. Drilling here takes patience with hard chert and respect for karst, because what goes on at the surface can reach the water below quickly.
Licensed by the State of Arkansas
Arkansas allows only licensed contractors to build water wells. Bob Wade Drilling Co. holds Arkansas water well contractor license C001315 in the Drill Systems Only category, listed in Benton County by the Arkansas Department of Agriculture’s Water Well Construction program for the 2025–2026 renewal year. You can check any contractor’s license with the state before you hire.
How the work is done
Honest work and straight answers: siting each well where the rules and the ground allow, sealing the casing into rock, disinfecting a drinking-water well before it’s used, and filing the state construction report that becomes part of your property’s record.
Who we drill for
Homeowners on acreage and rural lots, farms large and small, people who need irrigation water, and businesses and other properties beyond the city water lines.
Bed 03On record
The record, in dates we can source.
No invented anniversaries. The rock, the law, and the state’s own contractor lists.
- About 350 million years agoMississippian Period
A shallow sea lays down the Boone Formation: limestone layered with chert. It becomes the Springfield Plateau aquifer most local wells draw from.
- Older stillCambrian to Devonian
Dolostones and sandstones of the deeper Ozark aquifer, below a confining layer, reached only by much deeper wells.
- 1969Act 641
Arkansas begins licensing water well construction. Only a licensed contractor may build a well.
- 2024State contractor list
Bob Wade Drilling Co. appears on the state’s 2024 list of licensed water well contractors, Benton County.
- 2025–2026Renewal year
Listed again, license C001315, category Drill Systems Only.
Bed 04Home ground
The rock under Bentonville.
Red cherty clay
The top few feet to tens of feet: rocky red residuum left as the limestone dissolved. The casing has to be sealed through it so storm water can’t follow the pipe down.
Boone limestone and chert
The Springfield Plateau aquifer. Hard grey limestone with beds of flint-hard chert that wear on bits and slow the drill. Water travels in its fractures and dissolved openings.
Karst, sinkholes and springs
Where water has dissolved the rock into caves, sinkholes and springs. It holds water, and it lets surface water in fast. Siting, sealing and testing matter here.