deal with the explosive safely.  We practiced blowing up rocks in a creek bed to make a swimming hole.  For commercial use you needed a license to work with dynamite, but for home use almost anyone could buy and use the product.
  As in this case of the home-owner who may have dug wells in the past, but he surly had never run into hardpan dirt before moving to El Cajon.  There were a number of well diggers in the area that dug wells by hand.  One family I remember who were known to do this was the Swanson Family, known as "The Swanson Well Diggers of Santee."  They even had a winning softball team that played against the well known "Meat Packers Ball Club" of El Cajon.
  These days we have the advantage of backhoes, jack hammers, power drillers with large augers to dig down hundreds of feet to reach for water in almost anyplace.  Of course they had plenty of that equipment back then, but most of us could not afford such luxuries -- besides the water in El Cajon was not that hard to reach.  You simply had to get past the hardpan.  How many of you have dug into hardpan before . . . without dynamite?
 

To learn more about W. D. Hall and his family, logon to:
http://www.cajon.k12.ca.us/echs/echs_hallfamily.html

  Next to his new home the old-timer dug down with pick and shovel, digging a well for water by hand.  Water in El Cajon along Magnolia Avenue and First Avenue (now Greenfield Drive) back in the 1940s was very sweet and very cool.  He dug freely until he reached the brick-like hardpan. At that point he could not go any further with pick and shovel without great hardship.
  He managed to dig a small hole big enough to place a bundle of ten sticks of 80% dynamite in it, packed mud on top of that, lit the fuse climbed out of the hole and ran for cover. Ka boom! The dynamite blew with such force it rocked the whole area and was loud enough to cause the horses in the vicinity to bolt, and dishes to rattle a country block away.  After the dust settled he came from behind the corner of the little yellow house nestled next to the eucalyptus trees. There was dust and rubble so thick he couldn't immediately see the hole, or the house.  After a moment or two the dust cleared and he discovered the hole was much bigger, not deeper, but bigger, and he looked in amazement to see that part of the side of the house was blown away. He thought to himself, "Hum, I guess I used too much dynamite!" 
  There was a lot of trial and error using dynamite back then -- mostly error.  Not long after that incident they began regulating the use of dynamite for obvious reasons.  But it was still used in various projects both large and small,
  Back then it was easily purchased at the W. D. Hall Lumber and Hardware Company in El Cajon. If I remember correctly, as I do on occasion, there was an age limit like 18 or 21 years old.  We were even taught how to use dynamite on outings with the Boy Scouts, learning how to