'It's my gift' Laurel area dowser has found more than 1,000 wells

Bruce Devries is part magician, part saint.Dowser is his official title. Devries is now in his 80s and has been finding water hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth for more than six decades. He calls it a “gift from upstairs.”Devries and his wife Lil live in the rolling hills north of Laurel near Molt. Devries worked for years driving the gas truck for Cenex Refinery in Laurel and raised his family, including two daughters and a son, near Laurel.Devries got his first dowsing wand in 1957 after being shown how dowsing works by his father-in-law. They were sitting on his father-in-law’s porch in the Snowies when he remembers fiddling with the dowser, and finding that he had the touch. Not everyone does, Devires said.In those early days of dowsing, Devries used a solid piece of wire, but the constant pull on it was hard on his hands so he switched to an old CB radio antena that has a spring to absorb some of the shock of the pull.

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