“You can milk a cow the wrong way once and still be a farmer, but vote the wrong way on a water tower and you can be in trouble” ~ John F. Kennedy

On my drive in through the country, there are tons of interesting old structures, including water towers.  Many people may not know, however, why we have water towers.  They elevate the water in order to create water pressure in the water systems.  The reason that water comes out of your faucet is because of the pressure that your local water tower creates by the force of gravity alone – no pumps necessary, except to get the water up into the tower to begin with.

Here’s another interesting thing I saw on Dirty Jobs (Episode 25-79  “Dirty Jobs of the Big Apple”) – in New York City, the water pressure is only enough to push water up about 10 stories, so any building that is taller needs it’s OWN water tower on the roof.  Did you know that all of those tall buildings have water towers?  Funky!

This picture I took of Westley looks like something from the past, but it was used by the railroad only 60 years ago.  Here’s a few of closeups taken by others.