Water and Sewer

water and sewer

One windmill, three water towers, stories & more

history of the water system

By Sharla Sitzman, 2025

Do you think much about the modern infrastructure that we alternately enjoy and complain about? It has been built up over time. I’ll use Table Rock as an example. I think the other towns have a similar timeline.   Roads and bridges went in early. A town well was
added to the southwest corner of the Square at some point, with a windmill. In 1898, telephone lines came up from Sabetha, Kansas to DuBois and then on to Table Rock, with a spur to Pawnee City. Electricity came in 1909 and to the farms by the early 1950s. Paved roads? By 1921, Pawnee County had 66 miles of it, to which 15 miles were proudly added in 1922. Natural gas distribution came in 1930.

Now let me back up to water. Prior to the advent of the water system, Table Rock’s town well was at the southwest corner of the Square, using a windmill to draw water for horses, and a fountain for pedestrians.
By 1922, most towns had a new water “system” in place, i.e., with a water tower and water lines to individual users. Table Rock jumped on the water bandwagon right after World War I, voting a $25,000 bond in 1919.

It took two years to find a water source sufficient to serve the town. They dug many test holes, almost always finding water, but only enough to supply only a farmstead. They finally found what they needed across the street from the current fire station. That well could produce 100 gallons a minute.

Bids for a water system were solicited, with an “elevated water tank” (later called a standpipe and now a water tower). The low bidder, Asplund Construction, got the job for $17,500. (The high bid was $20,000). Asplund got started in October 1921, working as quickly as they could before winter weather set in. Construction of the water tower went slowly, but the workers made good time laying the water lines. Asplund had a “big engine” that operated a machine that dug trenches five feet deep at a rate of about a block a day, so fast that the workmen laying the clay tile could barely keep up.

The lines were laid on a roughly circular route beginning at the well. From there the line traveled west up the hill on Luzerne Street to Houston Street, then north along the Square a block to the water tower. From there it went a block north to State Street, two blocks west to 7th Street, three blocks south to Grand Street, four blocks east to Fifth Street, three blocks north to State Street, then two blocks west to Houston Street. Original reports said that if enough money was left, the Village Board hoped to extend the line two blocks west on Luzerne Street and two blocks north to State Street, but I don’t know when that section actually was done.
By December 1921, Frank Fencl was advertising “a complete line of everything to connect your building to water.” That included, “pipes fittings, shut-offs, sinks, bathtubs, hydrants,” a “hot water system,” and even “the compound Kompos T, which makes your hard water soft as rainwater.”

The system was completed and everybody – in Upper Town – was pleased and proud. A couple of years later, with the windmill disposed of and a water fountain standing alone at the corner of the Square, a “pagoda” was built around the fountain. That pagoda was restored in 2017, largely by the Table Rock Historical Society, which also installed a new drinking fountain.

The story doesn’t stop there. The water tower did not provide running water to the whole town. Lower Town got water within the lifetime of many still alive. Lower Town, as most know, refers to the Railroad Addition of Table Rock, down the hill and across Taylor Branch from the main part of town. It was added when the Atchison & Nebraska Railroad came to town in 1871. Lower Town residents, like their many compatriots in the country, had only well water. Taylor Branch was too much of an impediment to bring water lines across.

In 1956, the town decided on an “extension” to the water system to take running water to Lower Town. At the outset, the cost of the system was estimated at $6,000, based on an estimate by Howard Howell. Howard proposed to furnish the materials at cost, the total coming to $5,000. Two fire hydrants were also needed.   The water system fund had enough to cover that without putting up a bond. However, enough customers had to sign up and also pay the $27.50 hook up fee in advance. Albert Hillers led a campaign that acquired 22 of them, enough to go forward.

There would be almost a mile (5,100 feet) of 2” pipe laid from the city well to the train depot. It would cross Taylor Branch under the highway bridge. It could travel under the railroad tracks three times. The route reported was that it would travel on the southside of the highway from Taylor Branch to “the Wenzbauer corner,” go a block south, and then head toward the depot, traveling to Vess Harris’s place. Vess lived on part of the old railroad “Y” track. From there it would continue on to the Reno Inn and the depot. Then a 1” line would continue on to the Joe Tomek place. A 1” line would also feed the homes along the way.

Ronnie Gilbert well remembers cutting the thread for all of that pipe. A mile of it, an 8’ section at a time. He was just a young man at the time and didn’t even have a driver’s license yet, so traveled to the work with a Ford Constellation tractor. Three others installed the pipe, Howard Howell, Ed Flider, and Ronnie’s Uncle Bob Vondrasek.

And so, that’s the story. I live in Lower Town and enjoy running water, thanks to Ronnie Gilbert and also thanks to a number of other people long gone. I usually don’t think twice when I use my kitchen faucet. It’s motion activated and I just swipe my hand in the air and out it comes without further ado. It’s modern magic built on old-time efforts.

The original water tower in January 1942, photo by Arvid "Mike" Blecha

The current (2nd) water tower, May 17, 2017

In this undated photo of a parade on the south side of the Square, a windmill towers above the trees at the southwest corner. A well there provided a pump and a water fountain. Photo 1402.

Detail of photo 1402. This pre-dates the 1922 water system.

Howard Howell, with wife Veda, undated. He provided the materials for Lower Town’s water system at cost. That was in 1956 and he was in his 40s. He died in 1983 at the age of 72.

A young Ronnie Gilbert on front of the District 32 country school. Ronnie is still here and the school is still there, although it closed in 1956, the same year that Ronnie helped install the Lower Town water system. He was a high school senior by that time.

Ronnie Gilbert, Class of 1957, the Spring after he helped install the Lower Town extension of the water system

Ronnie Gilbert helping at the Senior Center in 2020. Photo by Sput Turnbull.

Ed Flider, 2nd from left, in 1958, a couple of years after he helped with the Table Rock water extension. (The others are unidentified) Photo shared by Wayne Steiner.

Bob Vondrasek with his family in 1957. The photo was taken at the Reno Inn, and Bob had helped extend town water to it the year before.

memories about grandma & grandpa's water

From the editor. These are memories from Marty Siemsen in 2020. Marty's grandparents were C. I. and Frances Norris, and they lived in a clay tile house at the foot of Luzerne Street, just east of the city well. Marty was born in 1944, so his memories post-date the Upper Town water system. I would speculate that the Norris household did not have running water because the water lines only went west from the well, but it could have been that they simply chose not to connect.

"I’ve got my memories of being in the kitchen with Grandmother baking and cooking stuff. That’s where she was all the time. She had a porch swing and in between baking and cooking she would cuddle up with me and we would swing and sing. That’s how I remember her.

Grandmother’s kitchen stove. It had those little things on top where you put the dough to get it to rise, and a tank on the side that held hot water, with a valve on it to get hot water for cooking. They ran plumbing from that valve through the wall to the bathroom. That’s how you got hot water for the tub!

I have the kerosene lamp that sat on Grandmother’s dining room table in that house before there was electricity. It has a round wick and burns really bright.

There was a little hand pump in the basement to pump water out of the cistern that was at the corner of the house. I used to take the lid off to show my cousin Jeannie the tadpoles and stuff swimming in that water. “We use that water!” she said. She was horrified. "Oh yes," I said, "Mother says that water was the best for washing your hair."