The Old Water Tower Falls
A local landmark built in 1912 is dismantled after the town shifts to a new well-pumped system.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
One of the landmarks at White Bluffs, not very ancient but quite prominent, disappeared this week when the old water tank and tower at the east edge of town was dismantled and torn down. The tank and tower were built in 1912 and have been used in connection with the town water system since that time until last summer, when the residents of the town took over the water system and pumped direct from a new well into the mains. A. J. Romeans has the contract for dismantling the tower. He sawed one of the legs under the tower in two and by attaching one end of a cable to the top of the tank and another to a block and tackle, pulled it over. It fell with a crash but did not break up much of the material, a considerable quantity of timbers, planks and lumber being salvaged. This will be sold by the townsite company.
“It fell with a crash but did not break up much of the material.”
Small towns frequently struggle with the maintenance and eventual obsolescence of early 20th-century infrastructure. White Bluffs itself would face an even more dramatic end when the Manhattan Project later displaced the entire community.
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