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The topic is prompted by York’s “hot air balloon” water tower adjacent to the Highway 81 - Interstate 80 intersection.
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Many people who travel Interstate 80 across Nebraska notice York’s “hot air balloon” water tower adjacent to the Interstate 80 / Highway 81 intersection . It was built to insure an adequate water supply and steady water pressure for the businesses clustered around the interchange. The original construction contract called for it to be painted buff and blue with “YORK” in black — the colors used by the York High School, and used on the City’s other water tower across the street from the High School. As the tower neared completion in early 1998, several people in the community commented a more eye-catching color scheme would help draw travelers’ attention to York. After a local entrepreneur organized a committee and raised the money needed to pay for the more elaborate design, the City Council authorized the change. The tower has become a local landmark and its image is widely used as a symbol of local identity. This essay lists a selection of “artistic” water towers similar to York’s . The ones listed here have some web presence to explain their appearance, or are ones we’ve seen personally. We’ve “skipped over” towers that have the mascots of local school athletic teams and towers that have a town name with a stylized logo (shade trees seem to be a favorite.) During an April, 2004 visit to Bryan / College Station, Texas we saw a tower with both town names plus a school mascot (and other info.) — it may since have been repainted. |
We’ve not included some very famous historic inner city water towers like the Chicago , Louisville, KY, and Saint Louis, MO structures in this survey. We also left out several less well known historic water towers like the Lawson Tower in Scituate, Massachusetts, the half-timbered pseudo-castle water tower at Indian Hill (Cincinnati) Ohio, the historic water tower used in Riverside, Illinois’ community logo, and the tourist attraction water tower at St. Mary’s, Ontario, Canada.
Since folks are motivated to list unusual water towers on their web sites for various reasons, we also call your attention to listings from:
- Canadian Water Towers and Standpipes was founded by Mark Visser of Burlington, Ontario. In summer 2006, it included three notable towers at Fort Sasketchewan, Alberta, Perth-Andover, New Brunswick, and Pembroke, Ontario among the more common types.
- Decorated Water Towers — a “TRIPOD” member site that includes annoying popups, but has several nice stories including some advertising towers which have since been destroyed.
- A Look at Water Towers from the Summer 1997 edition of the Minnesota Department of Health’s Waterline highlights several Minnesota towers.
- HENNIG MURAL DESIGN blends tanks and watertowers into their surroundings in the Northwest U.S.
- OHIO BARNS includes links to “artistic” and “historically significant” water towers. Each tower has a separate page including longitude and latitude (for the GPS enabled). This extensive list includes many towers found in other lists.
- Smiley Water Towers list from “Roadside America.”
- The Steel Plate Fabricators Association - Steel Tank Institute has a “fabricator locator” and links to photos of recent award winning tanks including some water towers.
- Texas Water Towers features small town towers, and doesn’t single out “artistic” ones.
- Trucker Mike’s Water Tower Pictures was compiled by an over-the road trucker .. (July 2008 — this archived version from the “wayback machine” only has the captions).
- This watertowers blog emanates from the Carolinas.
- Waymarking.com’s Water Towers category ranges world wide. Each entry provides a locator map and geographic coordinates. Waymarking did not exist when we started this web page in the early 1990s.
A few of the photos in this essay were taken by Kilgore Memorial Library’s Director Stan Schulz; most of them were copied from other web sites.
This site has even come to the attention of people with intersecting interests:
- The Hot Air Balloon HQ folks requested a reciprocal link.
- The “smiley face water tower” enthusiasts can wander over to the smileycollector web site, which includes some “smiley face” water towers in its multiplicity.
- water-towers.com is a resource for folks who want to build their own water tower.
| Alabama: Clanton | |||||
 | Clanton has a peach water tower. Peaches are a local product. The tower is a “copycat” of the Gaffney, South Carolina PEACHOID. | This link from the “ROADSIDE AMERICA.COM” web site notes the water tower celebrates the area’s peach production. The community’s page has a photo. | |||
| Alberta, Canada: Didsbury | |||||
 | The Disbury water tower is a standpipe on top of a hill in the middle of the local golf course. That’s why it sports a golfer mural. | The tower is featured on the tourism portion of the town’s web site. | |||
| Arkansas: Alma | |||||
 | Alma laid claim to the title “Spinach Capital of the World” because the local Allen Canning Company cannery produced most of the country’s canned spinach. Then they repainted their water tower. | This account is by a good-humored observer. | |||
| California: Kingsburg | |||||
 | This town’s Swedish settler heritage is celebrated with a community festival and a coffee pot water tower. | This California Heartland feature includes the story and a photo. The 2002 “World’s Largest” tour day 13 records a visit. | |||
| California: Sunnyvale | |||||
 | Sunnyvale’s former Libby Fruit cannery site is now an office park. The old cannery water tower painted with a ca. 1935 Libby Fruit label design is a local landmark, at 444 W. California. | This Day 6 stop on the 2002 “World’s Largest Tour.” is one impression; phoons’ fruit cocktail water tower is another. The Sunnyvale Public Library’s community history pages have some background — scroll down to 1985. | |||
| Florida: Cocoa | |||||
 | Cocoa sports a large U.S. Flag on a water tower. | The “waymarking.com” entry provides history and a map. | |||
| Florida: Lakeland | |||||
 | Lakeland, Florida has a “layer cake” water tower advertising a PUBLIX (grocery store chain), with cell phone antennas around the top representing the candles. | The waymarking.com gallery has two views. This may mark the company headquarters. | |||
| Florida: Pensacola Beach | |||||
 | Pensacola Beach’s Beach Ball water tower was in use until roughly 2005. | A March 10, 2005 item from the Gulf Breeze News noted the water tower would be maintained even though it was no longer needed for the local water system. | |||
| Florida: Plant City | |||||
 | Plant City, Florida’s strawberry water tower and an annual Strawberry Festival celebrate the large number of winter strawberries grown in the area. The water tower is located adjacent to to the Otis M. Andrews Sports Complex. on East Cherry Street. | The “waymarking” web site provides this information. | |||
| Florida: Seminole | |||||
 | The Florida Birds In Flight water tower mural in the Tampa suburb of Seminole is noted in a few “how to find us” instructions from the area. | The “RHometown.com” page for Seminole has several views, and it appears on the Ohio Barns site as the Pelican Water Tower. | |||
| Florida: Tampa | |||||
 | The old Seminole Indian Casino, near Tampa, Florida had a “water tower with an arrow through the tank” that was removed in 2002. | The story reflecting on its demise to make way for a grander casino is a “click & a scroll away” at GETHEP Click on “Roadside Distractions” in the right hand column, then scroll down to “Shot Through the Heart” toward the bottom of the FLORIDA stories. | |||
| Florida: Walt Disney World | |||||
 | The Walt Disney MGM “Earful Tower” may have never held water?? | The “Waymarking.com” Earful Tower page provides views and a succinct history. “Waymarking.com” also lists a twin near Paris, France. | |||
| Hawaii: Honolulu | |||||
 | Honolulu’s “DOLE PINEAPPLE” watertower was built to serve the company cannery in 1927. Time and altered corporate priorities resulted in the tower’s demolition in 1993. | An archived 2001 Honolulu Star-Bulletin story about the tower includes an early photo. | |||
| Illinois: Collinsville | |||||
 | The “World’s Largest Catsup Bottle” at Collinsville, Illinois is a | retired water tower that boasts its own web site! | |||
| Illinois: Joliet | |||||
 | Joliet’s Chicagoland Speedway has a water tower with side banners and a “checkered flag” color scheme. | This FLICKR(tm) photo is one view; the “waymarking.com” entry is comprehensive. | |||
| Illinois: Malden | |||||
 | Malden is a small village north of I-80 at milepost 62 in Illinois. | The village has a wikipedia(tm) entry, but no story about its water tower paint scheme. | |||
| Illinois: Metropolis (then) | |||||
 | The faded SUPERMAN(tm) image on the old Metropolis water tower was scrapped with the tower in 2003, despite local efforts to preserve it as a landmark. | Only memories of the old tower remain, but … | |||
| Illinois: Metropolis (now) | |||||
 | The “MAN OF STEEL” flies on the new water tower | in the Metropolis industrial park near I-24. | |||
| Illinois: Orland Park | |||||
 | Orland Park had a water tower that reminded someone of a golf ball on a tee, and lots of golf courses. So the tower was repainted , and “World’s Golf Center” was added below the town name. Although the tower was replaced with a larger one, and housing tracts and shopping malls outnumber golf courses, the slogan lived on … | as this 2004 Golf Illinois article attests. | |||
| Illinois: Peoria Heights | |||||
 | The Peoria Heights school colors are red, white, and blue which create a “hot air balloon” effect on one local water tower. | “Waymarking.com” has an entry. The “balloon” tower is in the “lower” part of the community; the water tower for the upper section is also an observation tower during clement weather. | |||
| Illinois: Rend Lake | |||||
 | The 27-hole Rend Lake golf course (at exit 77 on I-57 south of Mt. Vernon, IL) inspired the | “golf ball on a tee” tower seen in the golf logo on the Rend Lake.Org web site. The dimples are red circle outlines, and the tower really stands out at dawn. | |||
| Iowa: Adair | |||||
 | The well-known “Smiley Face” water tower at Adair was repainted early fall, 2003. | “Waymarking.com” includes this entry. A Visit Adair web site has the watertower as a page background. | |||
| Iowa: Stanton | |||||
  | Virginia Christine, the actress who played “Mrs. Olsen” in a series of coffee commercials, was a Stanton native. The town’s water tower was decorated as a Scandinavian themed coffee pot to honor their Swedish heritage and her achievements. When the town grew and they needed to expand their water supply, they added a complementary cup and saucer. | The local co-op telephone company web site has brief explanations. The Stanton Area Industrial Foundation web site has photos. | |||
| Iowa: Walcott | |||||
 | The thumbnail photo of the water tower at the IOWA-80 TRUCK STOP was taken in late evening. | The truck stop complex has its own web site. The tower’s legs appear at the edge of one panoramic view. | |||
| Kansas: Canton | |||||
 | The village of Canton, Kansas has two small water towers side-by-side marked “HOT” and “COLD.” | The town’s web site features them. | |||
| Kentucky: Florence | |||||
 | Florence, Kentucky built a new water tower in 1974 to serve commercial property along Interstate 75 and painted “FLORENCE MALL” on the side. When State officials called the banner illegal advertising, the “ M ” was altered to “ Y’ ”. Then the town started an annual Y’ALL FESTIVAL. | Read one version of the story at “laughing squid.” Or consult wikipedia. | |||
| Kentucky: Louisville | |||||
 | The “OLD FORESTER” water tower at Louisville, Kentucky has been called the “World’s Largest Bourbon Bottle Replica.” | The “Roadside America” tip has a couple of photos, and another appears in this account of a visit to the Brown-Forman headquarters. | |||
| Michigan: Ann Arbor | |||||
 | One water tower at Ann Arbor, Michigan sports a “partly cloudy sky.” | It was part of Ann Arbor’s Public Art program. Ohio Barns also includes it. | |||
| Michigan: Detroit | |||||
 | The old water tower at Detroit’s zoo (Royal Oak) displays a mural of Serengeti wildlife at sunset. | The Ohio Barns listing is succinct. The mural is a repeating icon on the Detroit Zoo web site. | |||
| Michigan: West Branch | |||||
 | West Branch, Michigan went smiley — water tower .. police car .. | A smileycollector page has part of the story — The car was part of a local safety education program. | |||
| Minnesota: Lindstrom | |||||
 | The “teapot” water tower at Lindstrom, Minnesota has been maintained as a landmark even though it has not been used since 1990. | Here are a couple of views from the Lindstrom City web site. | |||
| Minnesota: Princeton | |||||
 | At Princeton, Minnesota the water tower was painted with the town name against a background of lake side woods, with the letters in a rippled reflection below. | As of July 2008, the city’s web site no longer shows the tower. Was it repainted? | |||
| Minnesota: Rochester | |||||
 | Rochester, Minnesota might be best known for its medical resources. But the Libby Foods plant there has its water tower designed as a large ear of corn. | The Minnesota Historical Society has this view in their “roadside architecture” gallery. | |||
| Minnesota: Sauk Rapids | |||||
 | “Rising Above the Rest” is the community motto at Sauk Rapids. | One of the community’s water towers bears a “hot air balloon” design in yellow, reds and orange, as shown in the Sauk Rapids portion of the St. Cloud Area Chamber of Commerce web site. | |||
| Missouri: Tipton | |||||
 | The 8-Ball water tower at Tipton originally recognized a local manufacturer. | This “World’s Largest” 8 Ball story will fill you in, and the Ohio Barns 8 Ball will give you GPS cordinates and a map. | |||
| Nebraska: Hartington | |||||
 | Hartington’s colorful water tower | appears in the “slide show” on the city’s home page in the summer of 2008. | |||
| Nebraska: York | |||||
 | Here’s the “hot air ballon” water tower that motivated this survey. The library where this web page is maintained is downtown. | The “waymarking.com” entry provides several additional views; the tower’s image is incorporated in the Greater York Area Chamber of Commerce web site masthead. | |||
| To be continued .. | |||||
A June 2006 version of this page can be found at the “wayback machine” web site.