Duluth Mystery Photo #14: Ice Monument

The Lakewood Pumping Station was built sometime in the 1890's (?) to get cleaner water from the Lake for city residents (because people were dying of typhoid after drinking sewage-contaminated water from closer to town). Maybe they had an ornate fountain there just for the heck of it as well?

GTR is on track. That was taken at the pump house around the turn of the century. There was a practical fountain where citizens could draw their own water. I believe what we have here is perhaps that simple fountain leaked enough to build up this formation, and then someone put a flag on it. That's just a guess. I have never encountered any other information on a fountain at Lakewood. If I find anything on genbank I will let you know.

There's a story in a 1903 edition of the DNT about George Gould of Lakewood having a fountain made for $50,000 by the same guy who did the fountain at the statehouse in Hartford, Conn. I can't believe they would let it ice over like that. The pumping station fountain, according to a 1914 DNT, came that year, much later. Who is George Gould?

I retract the Gould portion of that post. Wrong Lakewood.

The postmark on the car reads 1901, so it predates the articles Spy refers to.

So, I'm a little confused, Spy--was there a $50K fountain, and if so what year was it built? And what the heck happened to the $50K fountain?

I think we can say the pumping station theory is confirmed. The version above refers to it specifically as "Fountain at Lakewood Pumping Station in Winter."

How many versions of this damn postcard are out there? It looks like each of these three are different photos, although the first two appear to either have been shot at the same moment or the two people are drawn in with different poses.

It should be noted that this post follows by a few days the Lake Voice News story on Duluth's Orange Street Ice Volcano.

http://alaskanalpineclub.org/old/IceTower/IceTowers.html

Remembered an old Alaskan Alpine Club page...