Carl Bowline said anyone who has ever taken a dip in his 80-year-old swimming pool insists there isn’t a better place around Selma to cool off in the summertime.

The Bowline pool isn’t like most pools that exist today.

Located on Old Orrville road, the swimming pool measures at 50 feet wide and 100 feet long. It holds 225,000 gallons of water that is fed directly from two artesian wells on Bowline’s property.

While it used to be as deep as 14 feet and have a two-story diving board, repairs done to the bottom of the pool have changed the dimensions to around 2-foot deep in the shallow end and 9.5 feet in the deep end.

The pool was dug in the mid-1930s by Bowline’s grandfather.

“It was done after the Depression to make a little side money,” Bowline said. “The original cost to swim in the pool, I think, was 10 cents.”

The walls around the pool sloped away from the water to make it look larger until Bowline made the walls flat in 1994 so it would be safer for people to get out of the pool.

Bowline said the pool used to be one of the few ways people could stay cool in the summertime before houses were air-conditioned.

“You can’t find something like this in every community,” Bowline said. “For me growing up, it has just been its own little unique hole.”

The pool functions the same way it did when it was first opened. The water from the artesian well flows naturally underground until it hits the pipe that is nearly 400 feet in the ground and pushes its way up and out the end of the pipe into the pool.

The pool then overflows into a creek that eventually makes its way into the Alabama River.

“It’s basically like sticking a straw in the water flow and the water finds its way out,” Bowline said. “It doesn’t require any electricity for the pumps to feed the pool. It continuously cycles through that throughout its life. It’s kind of a natural pool.”

The natural process of the pool keeps the water around 75 degrees all year long.

“The water has a real unique quality to it,” Bowline said. “You almost have to experience it to understand. It’s something you have to feel.”

A large hole collapsed in the bottom of the pool two years ago and released large amounts of water.

There wasn’t enough water to swim in it until Bowline and several of his friends recently repaired the hole with a large batch of concrete. The pool filled up again on July 16, seven days after the repairs were through and the plug was put back in. People have been in and out of the pool ever since.

“When we put that plug back in it was like everything changed,” Bowline said. “It didn’t seem quite so hot and didn’t seem quite so buggy. It all just kind of seemed to stop. Everything just went to focusing on the pool getting full.”