Three generations of well drillers
W M Blain Well Drill & Pump didn’t start as a business plan. It started with one man teaching his wife the trade, then both of them teaching their son. Three generations later, we’re still drilling the same kind of wells across Northern Nevada — same family, same standards, same answers to the same questions about your water.
1958 · the beginning
Bill drilled in California for several years before crossing into Nevada and earning his Nevada well–driller’s license in 1958. It was a different country out here then — fewer wells, fewer people, and a lot more guesswork about what was under the ground. Bill spent the next two decades learning every formation between the Carson Valley and the Pyramid Lake basin.
He didn’t set out to start a multigenerational family business. He set out to drill wells right. The business came after.
1978 · the pioneer
Bill’s wife Wanda was not about to let her husband be the only well driller in the family. She applied for her own license in 1978. But women well drillers were unheard of in the ‘70s, and the contractors board rejected her — concluding, in writing, that “a woman was unable to do the work of a well driller.”
Wanda was undeterred. The contractors board may not have believed in her, but Governor Mike O’Callaghan did. With the governor’s intervention, Wanda got her license — the first woman in Nevada to hold one.
She spent the next twenty years drilling alongside Bill and raising their son with the working principle that doing what’s right is not always what’s easy.
1996 · the second generation
Tom Blain — Bill and Wanda’s son — took over the family business in 1996. He’d been around drilling rigs since he could walk, and learning the trade from both his parents since he was a teenager. The transition wasn’t a hiring decision. It was a family handing off what they’d spent four decades building.
Tom still answers the phone himself when you call. He’s the one who comes out to look at your well, and most days he’s out on a rig with the crew. That’s not marketing language — it’s just how the business has always been run.
What carries forward
Sixty–seven years of drilling Nevada’s wells doesn’t mean we’ve seen everything. It means we’ve learned which corners can’t be cut.
If your well doesn’t need deepening, we’ll tell you. If the pump you’re replacing is sized wrong for your draw, we’ll tell you that too. Selling the unnecessary job is how contractors lose customers for generations — we plan to be here for the next one.
Tom is on the property for the estimate. Tom is reachable by phone during the work. Tom is the one who walks the finished well with you. Same family, same accountability — that’s not a tagline, it’s how the day actually runs.
Proper casing. Proper screen. Pumps sized right. Pressure tanks matched to household demand. A well drilled right will outlast you — a well drilled fast will need somebody else’s phone number in five years. We’re not the fast option.
Credentials
License #46498A with the Nevada State Contractors Board. Active and in good standing. Family-held since 1958.
License #912877 with the California State Licensing Board, for work in adjacent California counties.
Surety bond on file in both states. General liability and workers’ comp coverage. Proof available on request before any work begins.
