Timeline of Lincoln Park Water Tower History

• In May 1889 the Monroe City Council overwhelmingly approved the development of a municipal water works.  Principal motives for this decision was to better fight fires and reduce the dust in the summer.  Most people wrongly thought that their own wells had pure water.

 

• The development of municipal water systems, along with advent of electricity and the telephone, dramatically changed the way people lived in the 20th Century.

 

• The city hired artesian well drillers from Beloit.  They set up their derrick just a block off the Square on 11th St. (Syndicate Block).  The workers drilled day and night, but no water was found at 600 feet and their drill bits were lodged in the dry hole. 

 

• The city decided in September 1889 to give up the idea of running its own water works system and granted a 20-year franchise to William Wheeler of  the Eclipse Windmill Company of Beloit.  The franchise was known as the Monroe Water Works Company.

 

• Lincoln Park was chosen as the site for the water tower because it was the highest elevation in Monroe, about 1100 ft. above sea level.

 

• The water tower was built in less than 4 months.  The water tower was built with locally manufactured cream colored bricks topped with a 100,000 gallon capacity wooden tank.  There also is another, smaller cream brick tower structure inside the larger tower.  This  inner tower provides additional support for the tank.  The total height of the tower, with tank, approximates 100 feet. 

 

• Monroe's water works was a combination of a gravity and direct pressure system.  The water tower tank, by gravity, provided constant pressure on the mains throughout the city and big steam pumps could be used as needed to increase the pressure in the mains to fight fires.  

 

• The pump house was located on what is now 5th Ave., near the well.  In order to make the pumps available in the shortest possible time, the fires under the boilers were kept "banked" all the time when not in use.  This "banked fire" keeps the steam in the boilers at a pressure of 70 pounds per square inch, and when opened up will lift the pressure in a very few minutes to 100 pounds per square inch, which the pumps have to bear to throw a vigorous fire stream.

 

• By early 1890  the municipal water works had laid 4-miles of pipe and was operational for fire protection, but further testing needed to be done to test the purity of the water supply.

 

• In 1906 the city purchased the water works company for $75,000 and in 1914 replaced the old wooden tank with a new pre-fabricated steel tank, manufactured by Des Moines Bridge and Iron Company.

 

• In 2005 the Green County Historical Society took the lead in putting the water tower on the State and National Registers of Historic Places.  Many citizens contributed money in this effort.  The Monroe Woman's Club donated the historical plaque above the tower's door.

 

• The old water tower was eligible to be put on the historical registers under two criteria:  (1) it is architecturally significant and a fine example of the type of water tower construction that was popular in Wisconsin during the late 19th Century, and (2) it is historically significant because it represents the establishment of a municipal water system that dramatically changed the way people lived in the 20th Century.

 

• In 2010 the city council shared the cost of repainting the steel tank with the Historical Society.