Glenwood Herald

Glenwood Water Tower comes down after 75-plus year history January 31, 2007 - No reporter cited

After some 75 odd years as the tallest object in the City of Glenwood, the town’s original steel four legged water tower was taken down on Thursday, January 25, 2007. Earlier the same day, the “Baker Standpipe” a cylindrical type water tower located on the hill near the junction of Hwys. 70 and 70B was also taken down. This tower was put up in the 1970s.

Both towers were obsolete and had not been used for quite some time. After a three year long water improvement project that had increased the city’s capacity to 2,000,000 gallons, approximately 300 new customers were added and a new standpipe was added on Burnham Mountain, in the south part of the city.

The main part of the four new storage tanks is a 450,000 gallon water tower built on North Clay Street in the north part of the city on the Montgomery County line. This tank went on line in August 2005.
The entire project cost the city approximately $5,205,946.95.

It is believed the original water tower was built in the late 1920s or early 1930s when Glenwood first began construction of a city water system.

Probably one of the most infamous tales concerning the old tower is recounted here from the June 7, 1956 issue of the Glenwood Herald.

On June 1, 1956, Omer Vaughn and Aaron Dingler were working inside the tank repairing the lining of the pipe, while a third man, Gordon Fitch, worked on the outside of the tank.

Vaughn was being pulled to the top of the standpipe when a spark from a fan that they used to draw fresh air into the tank or a spark from a welding torch (it was never determined), set fire to a large piece of canvas.

The updraft drew smoke upward and a blaze into the standpipe where he was working. They pulled him up about 50 feet when he passed out from the smoke and he fell back down into the standpipe. By this time, the flames had ignited tubes and wires from the welding apparatus and they were also drawn into the standpipe.

The flames were extinguished, but Vaughn died from smoke inhalation.

The company that took the water tower down is called Isler Corporation from Michigan and they exclusively take down old water towers all over the United States.

They took down both towers in Glenwood in less than six hours and were scheduled to take down towers in Missouri and Oklahoma in the next few days.

The cost to the city of Glenwood to have the towers removed was about $20,000.

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