Zumbrota, Minnesota's aging water tower is coming down this Thursday, ending a 55-year run as one of the small city's most familiar landmarks along U.S. Highway 52. The 1971 steel structure once held 200,000 gallons of drinking water for the Goodhue County community, but it has stood empty for months since a citywide pipe upgrade made it unnecessary. City officials say a work crew will need only a single day to dismantle it once the surrounding area is cleared.
According to a statement from the City of Zumbrota, the tank was taken offline roughly two months ago after a municipal water main looping project rendered it obsolete. The city said heavy equipment would be brought in and public exclusion zones set up around the site while crews complete the teardown in one day.
The tower's vital statistics come from MPR News, which reports the multi-leg steel structure near U.S. Highway 52 was built in 1971 and once held 200,000 gallons of water. Those figures match records kept by MinnesotaWaterTowers.com, which also notes Zumbrota now relies on a larger, 700,000-gallon reservoir tower built in 2000 on the city's east side.
Why the Landmark Became Obsolete
The pipe project that doomed the old tower had significant federal backing: a $560,000 Environmental Protection Agency grant awarded specifically to Zumbrota for its water main loop project, according to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee. Federal environmental grants like that one regularly help small rural Minnesota cities modernize aging drinking water systems.
There's also a safety dimension to the teardown. Coating tests on aging municipal water towers across Goodhue County have confirmed lead-based paint, according to funding documentation from the office of U.S. Representative Brad Finstad, presenting health and safety concerns as the structures reach the end of their useful lives. Lead paint abatement on mid-century steel tanks can make long-term maintenance, or any attempt at repurposing, financially unworkable for towns the size of Zumbrota.
A Landmark With Plenty of Company Statewide
Zumbrota's tower isn't an outlier — it's part of a broader pattern across Minnesota. Statewide tracking by MinnesotaWaterTowers.com counts 1,118 total water towers and storage tanks, with 1,054 still active, 35 decommissioned, and 29 already fully demolished. Only 16 of those structures statewide carry any kind of historic preservation status, per the same tracking group.
That scarcity makes sense once you consider the criteria: just 11 water towers in Minnesota are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, according to the Minnesota Historical Society. Standard riveted- and welded-steel towers built between 1946 and 1980 — like Zumbrota's — are generally considered too common to qualify for historic protection, the society notes.
Zumbrota's Real Historic Landmarks Remain Untouched
For a sense of what does qualify, consider Kasson in nearby Dodge County. The oldest standing water tower in Minnesota is there — an 86-foot stone-and-steel ornamental structure built in 1895 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. Kasson's tower originally held a wooden tank before being upgraded to steel.
Zumbrota itself isn't short on preservation-worthy landmarks — just not water towers. The Goodhue County city sits along the North Fork of the Zumbro River and counted 3,726 residents in the 2020 census, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures; the city even brands itself as the only Zumbrota in the world. It's also home to the Zumbrota Covered Bridge, built in 1869 and now anchoring Covered Bridge Park — the last remaining operational historic covered bridge in Minnesota and a National Register of Historic Places listing in its own right, according to the City of Zumbrota.
Regional Partners Share the Infrastructure Bill
The water main project fits into a larger regional strategy, too. Zumbrota partners with the nearby cities of Goodhue, Pine Island, and Wanamingo through the North Zumbro Sanitary Sewer District, a joint effort to plan and fund water and wastewater infrastructure across the county, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Pooling resources through the joint powers district lets the smaller communities manage population growth and meet environmental standards without shouldering the costs alone.
As recently as this past Sunday, the tower was still standing along Highway 52, per MPR News. By the end of Thursday, that 55-year fixture will be gone — an ordinary steel tank, like the vast majority of its kind across Minnesota, that simply wasn't old or unusual enough to be saved.
