Jim Bradshaw: The towns named for the towers

By JIM BRADSHAW
One of my gifts under the tree last Christmas was a T-shirt inscribed with the question: “Have you ever noticed how many towns are named after their water tower?”
It gave me a good laugh when I unwrapped it, and it also caused me to wonder when we started building the towers and putting our names on them. I’ve heard somewhere that naming began as a way to guide pilots in the early days of aviation, but I think it probably started earlier than that.
The first towers began to sprout in the late 1800s, when reliable steam pumps capable of pushing water into them began to be developed. They were hailed as an inexpensive way to use gravity to distribute water, but the first ones were also symbols of community growth — showing that a place had become big enough to need one, and prosperous enough to build one.
I haven’t been able to find for sure just where the first one went up in south Louisiana, but a remembrance in 1899 by a man who appeared to be well past middle age gives New Iberia a good claim. The tower there, he said, had been built by his grandfather “by the old ferry crossing” and was filled with water pumped from Bayou Teche. We don’t know how old grandpa was when he built the tower, so we can’t put a date on when he did it, but he seems to have been an innovator.
“The tower was built from a large, hollow cypress log, about 60 feet high, sawed off square and a bottom nailed on, and mounted on a platform,” according to the reminiscence.
Lafayette was planning construction of a fancier tower about the time that letter was written. The engineers said it would be made of steel plates riveted together, 12 feet in diameter, 125 feet high, and that it would hold more than 100,000 gallons of water.
Opelousas was putting up a steel tower on the courthouse square about the same time, but it was not so well received. People were afraid it would topple over and kill someone.
The police jury had a long and contentious meeting over the question of “whether it was dangerous to the public and private property in that vicinity, and whether, safe or unsafe, it should be allowed to be built on the square.”
The controversy came to a head after the town council condemned the foundation for the tower and ordered the contractor “to construct a new one of better material.”
The parish and town officials ultimately met in a joint session and the police jury approved the tower, with a new base, by a 6-4 vote.
In Alexandria in May 1898, folks were so proud of their 140-foot tower that they raised money to put a pole on top of it to fly “a great flag … [that] can be seen all over town and far into the country.”
Alas, the big, visible flag, perhaps a forerunner to painting a name that could be widely seen, lasted only a year.
There may or may not be some moral to be drawn here, but it was on July 4, 1899 — Independence Day — that lightning shattered the flag staff, and — shades of Opelousas anxiety — “a few of the larger pieces that struck the ground would have killed whoever had been struck by them.”
The adage “pride goeth before the fall” comes to mind, but I make no judgments.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.