Tenleytown neighborhood/Fort Reno - Washington, DC - January 2015

One beautiful weekend afternoon we went water tower hunting in DC. There are not many but we found a historic tower in the Tenleytown neighborhood. This area is the highest point in DC at 409 feet above sea level. Because of that, it was turned into a fort during the Civil War. Lincoln visited the fort on July 11, 1864, and later that day Confederate troops advanced on it from the north. Calvary from the fort engaged the advancing enemy and the fort's cannons shelled the enemy nearly four miles away. Read more here on page 11 from Cultural DC.

Thirty years after this fight the city removed the fort remnants and constructed an underground water reservoir and the red-brick water tower. It took some digging but I read that the sandstone castle is the pumping station.

Water tower and pumping station (castle)

However, you'll notice three structures on the hill in the picture below - a second red-brick tower with white on top (far left). Believe it or not, that is actually a cold-war era communications tower called "cartwheel" meant to look like a water tower. It is now operated by the Federal Aviation Administration for civil communication needs. Read more here. 

Tower on far left is a cold-war communications tower