page_title: Tankhouse
section_title: Geographic distribution
hierarchical_section_title: Tankhouse / Geographic distribution
caption_attribution_description: English: Tankhouse, Comfort, Texas
context_page_description: A tankhouse is a water tower enclosed by siding. Tankhouses were part of a self-contained domestic water system supplying the house and garden, developed before the advent of electricity and municipal water mains. The system consisted of a windmill, a hand-dug well and the tankhouse. The windmill pumped water from the well up into the tank at the top of the tankhouse, from where it flowed down under gravity pressure to the house and garden. The system used no fuel or electricity; today it would be called green or eco-friendly.
context_section_description: There are far more tankhouses in California than in any other state, and they most probably originated in California. A tankhouse was built in Mendocino, California, in 1857 and many tankhouses in a variety of designs are still standing in that village. Tankhouses can be found in most of the state's 58 counties, wherever there was water not more than 50 feet or so below the surface. Probably after transcontinental and branch railroads were completed, tankhouses were built in other western states, the midwest, and even in the east.
  There is an interesting but as yet not well documented cluster of tankhouses in the Texas hill country west of Austin, where German immigrants settled in the last half of the 19th century. They found no redwood, but there was plenty of limestone, and cypress trees along the creeks: they built their towers of limestone and their tanks out of cypress wood. It is possible that the tankhouse idea traveled from California to Texas, but it is also possible that the early German immigrants conceived the idea themselves or brought it with them from Germany. The cypress tanks, sometimes called cisterns in Texas, were always exposed on top of the limestone towers, and the windmills stood on separate towers over the nearby well. Later, tankhouses in the same area were built of concrete with steel or concrete tanks, and a few were built of wood in the California style. In Texas the windmill always stood on a separate tower.
caption: Tankhouse, Comfort, Texas
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