The Pump Tower
Circa 1915
When a town was settled, the settlers most often chose the site because of a nearby crossroads, or, more importantly, because of nearby natural resources - especially water. Town founder Richard Munford had the best of both here, with the easy ford across Green River. But the land above the floodplain had many sinkholes, and sinking streams. Water was near, and plenty of it; but it had to be raised upward from below.
Munfordville's first pumping system was built at the instruction and expense of Simon Bolivar Buckner, who, as the biggest boy in his school, had to trudge down the hill and back to carry water for the school. He swore that when he grew up no other boy would ever have to do so, and he kept his word.
That system, located northwest of here by a spring, eventually fell into disrepair, and the pump tower before you was constructed by C.R. Carden to elevate river water to town level. It stands today, however, simply as a marker in time - by the 1950s a later brick structure replaced this tower, itself at last replaced by the water treatment facility you passed on your way here.
Marker can be reached from River Road east of Old Street.
Courtesy hmdb.org
