Our Wooden Water Towers

Structures and streets have stories to tell. Sometimes we are lucky enough to reconstruct their histories, and sometimes the past remains shrouded in silence and mystery. So, when a reader asked me to write about the wooden water tower structures visible on Allen Road and St. Clair Road, I decided to find out as much as I could.

A Google search of “historic wooden water towers” pulled up over 250 photographs, but none of the images look like the towers found in our valley. Most of the photos feature wooden tanks that are round in shape. The closest image match is a water tower structure in Serbia! Our local water towers, I surmised, must be unique. So, I turned to Bunny Corkill, who recommended that I contact Masa Kito Fugitani, whom I wrote about a few months ago. Masa was a member of the Kito family, Japanese farmers who owned the property at 955 St. Clair (now, the Gomes ranch) between 1920 and 1958, where a wooden water tank still stands. Masa put me in touch with her brother Noboru, who wrote down his memories concerning the water tank.

“There was a doorway into the bottom of the tank house itself that housed the water pump, piping to the tank. A bucket held water to the pump could be primed before hitting the push button ON switch. On the wall was a metered 4-inch board with a sliding water depth indicator that was mounted on a rope to a float mounted inside the tank. When the tank was low, the sliding board was high…. This was the indicator that the water was low, and water had to be pumped into the tank.”

Both Nobie and Masa remembered the importance of checking the water level every day at noon. If water ran out of the overflow pipe, everyone scrambled to fill every available container in order to conserve the precious liquid.

Noboru (Nobie) used the evocative phrase, “It was more than a tank house for supplying water to our house and to our dairy milk cows.” It certainly was. The uses of the structure speak to the ingenuity, efficiency, and cleanliness of the Itos and the Kitos, who between them raised 14 children on the St. Clair Road farm. The tower served as a water provider, a laundry facility, a workroom, and a storage unit. I am sure that at times, it was also a place to play or to find solitude.

A building attached to the tower itself housed a milk separator, which they used to make cream that they then sold to the local creamery to make butter and cheese. “There was a large wash basin that was used to wash off the bunched vegetables, like carrots, beets, turnips, and radishes that were supplied to the I.H. Kent store, Safeway, and Kolhoss. There was an old Easy washing machine in the corner, and in the other corner was a wash tub that sat on top of a 55-gallon drum that was cut in half with an opening on the bottom where wood could be inserted to heat the water in the wash tub that sat on top of the drum. Hot water was needed to wash all the milking pails and separator disks, and do the family laundry, which was an all-day event.”

I do not know why our local water towers are apparently unique in design and structure. It is possible that a local builder offered his particular design, materials, and construction skills to settlers who were ready to build or replace a water tower. I do know that many similar structures in the valley have succumbed to time. I remember that once a wooden water tower, like the St. Clair tower, stood on Union Road, where my English teacher, Anne Berlin, resided. It added more charm to an already charming property, but it no longer stands, its story lost to time and times. Thank you, Nobie and Masa, for keeping your past alive.

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