Category Archives: Water Tower Wednesday

Water Tower Wednesday – Haskell Haymakers

One of my favorite bloggers Daryl Edelstein of “Out and About in New York City” posts photographs and commentary of various water towers she has found in New York City over the years. Every building over a certain, not very high, height has to have one and there are lots of tall buildings in NYC so she has lots of material.

So I’ve always been jealous of her rooftop water towers. We don’t have many of those in Oklahoma. In fact I don’t think that I have ever seen even one! But you know I have to go with what I have and what I have are a couple of towers in Haskell, Oklahoma that I found on a recent geocaching trip. Daryl is posting photographs of three water towers today. I found only two towers but I’m posting two photographs of each so I think that I’m ahead.

Haskell has population of about 2000 people. Does that mean that you need one water tower per thousand people? Would one of you check on that and get back to me? See, here you are reading my humble little blog and you already have a homework assignment. It’s due tomorrow! I’ll be checking.

The Haymakers refers to the local football high school. I am not sure how good they are but their web presence needs a little help. All I saw was the 2011 football schedule and a link to a photograph of the 2013 team. I hope that their team is better than their webmaster. You know how hot it is here in Oklahoma during practice at the beginning of school? It is darned hot is hot it is. They deserve a little more recognition.

Oh well, the school year has barely just started. Lets cut them some slack.

This weekend I am going to my first High School Football Game since 1970, 43 years ago. I’m looking forward to it. Logan’s new school has a football team so this will be a first for us. Go Patriots!! And go Haymakers!!!

When was the last time you went to a High School Football game?

Water Tank Wednesday – Glasnost Edition

A few weeks ago I dropped off the kid at a friend’s house so they could play video games while I went geocaching at Lake Bixhoma. Near the lake are these water tanks for the city of Bixby.

Near the water tanks is the Oklahoma Geophysical Laboratory. Way back when in the early 1990’s, when George H. Bush was President he and Michael Gorbachev agreed to let the Russians build a nuclear monitoring station there so the Russians could keep tabs on the USA anytime we wanted to test a “device” bigger than 50 kilotons. Their monitoring station was deeded over to them and was considered Russian Territory just like an embassy (can you imagine that howling that would result if our current President agreed to anything of the sort.)

Several years later the technology needed advanced to the point where the Russians didn’t need the site any more and they deeded it back to the US.

Here is a brief newspaper article on the matter. This is an essay written by a woman whose father was involved in the project. And this is a brief history of the Oklahoma Geophysical Laboratory that talks about the Russian monitoring site and also some interesting information about how the facility is still involved in monitoring the world for nuclear tests.

Unfortunately, the lab and the old Russian site are well off the public roads and gated from inquiring bloggers. I would really like to go check things out there and take a few pictures. Apparently the road by the Russian site was renamed “Glasnost Road” and the road sign is still up.

Water Tower Wednesday is a feature my blog friend Fashionista. Check out her blog Out and About in New York City. The water towers in New York City don’t have near as much rust as the ones above do.

Oh, and yes I looked for four caches and found all of them.

Water Tower Wednesday – The Granite Water Tower of Dell Rapids

I found this beauty back in August during a trip to South Dakota for a family reunion. The old water tower was built in 1894 out of Sioux quartzite, a locally quarried stone. The forty five foot tower was operational until 1960 until replaced by a new tower. The old tower is now on the National Register of Historic Places. It looked pretty sturdy and well maintained to me for a 119 year old water tower. I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t last another 119 years. The water tank was placed at the top of the tower. There is more information here.

As a bonus, the water tower has its own geocache, “Dell Rapids Historic Series: Wasser Werks.”
The people in the photograph above from left to right are my Sister Ellen, my Uncle Glenn, who was on his very first geocaching hunt, and the world’s greatest BIL Irv. And yes, we found the cache. Or rather Irv found it.

Thanks to Daryl of Out and About in New York City about getting me interested in Water Towers. She has a regular feature called Water Tower Wednesday that I borrow every now and then.

Water Tower Wednesday – Hot, Warm, Cold

On the main road in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Water Tower Wednesday – Woolaroc

SuperPizzaBoy ventured to Oklahoma’s Woolaroc last Saturday and spent some time hiking the trails, photographing the critters and perusing the art in the museum. The ranch was built in the early 20th century and is totally old school including this water tower.

I just love Woolaroc. It started out as the ranch of oilman Frank Phillips who kept all sorts of exotic game animals there and a private art collection that just grew and grew until he built a museum to house it. It has all sorts of wonderful old rock buildings. It is out in the middle of nowhere about twelve miles from Bartlesville.

I’m a follower of Out and About in New York City and FashhionistaNYC, the author, features the building top water towers in that city of which their may be thousands. We have very few building top water towers in Oklahoma but we have lots of free standing tanks.

Water Tower Wednesday – What Goes Up Has to Come Down

My blog friend Fashionista of Out and About in New York City features a photograph or two of the city’s many rooftop water towers on Wednesdays. I’ve have had severe case of water tower envy because we don’t do that here in Oklahoma and the water towers we do have are not near as stylish as those in New York.

I was delighted however to find a photograph of a water tower in my Dad’s collection of slides that I recently scanned. He told me that he got to tour a paper mill in under construction in Snowflake, Arizona way back in the 50’s and that was the mill’s brand new shiny water tower. I remember that paper mill. We used to drive by it now and then and it stunk! It stunk to high heaven for miles. It was flat awful. Talk about a good reason for air pollution laws.

So, I got to thinking. (I’m not used to thinking and it does kind of hurt when I try, but I kept at it, and worked through the pain) and I got to wondering what happened to the old paper mill, and, if the mill was still around, was the water tower still around. So I turned to my old friend Google, and found out that the mill’s owners shut it down last October because the newsprint it produced was no longer in demand and sold the facility early this year to a company who then went and auctioned every single thing they could in a very detailed list 24 pages long.

As far as the water tower is concerned above is a screen shot of the present water tower, at least as it existed last August. I can’t really tell if it is the present water tower or not. I’m betting with the dismantling of the plant that it is not long for this world. Maybe somebody bought it and is moving it to a rooftop in New York City.

And so anyway I guess that it is all kind of sad and everything and I feel bad for the workers who lost their job but things such as this happens as our economy changes and reacts to technology. So those of you who longer subscribe to daily newspapers are to blame! How is that for a parting guilt shot?

Water Tower Wednesday – Robert E. Lee Hotel in San Antonio (Air Conditioned)

One of my favorite bloggers Daryl of Out and About in New York City often posts pics of water towers in New York City. New York City for some reason has lots of of buildings with water towers on top of them. I think they are totally cool and I’ve had a serious case of water tower envy because in Oklahoma individual buildings don’t have water towers. We have lots of other more conventional water towers but that is not what I wanted.

So I finally found one in San Antonio. So here it is.

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