Cathance Water Tower

The Cathance Water Tower is a 30 foot tall, oddly-shaped wooden structure originally built to hold 5,000 gallons of water. Although it is now owned by the town of Topsham, it wasn’t actually built for the town’s use, but instead for a single family. It is considerable smaller than Bangor’s 1.75 million gallon Thomas Hill Standpipe that you can read about on this same site.

Use Water to Get Water

The Rogers family, who had been farming the surrounding area since the 1700’s, constructed the water tower around 1906 to provide a reliable source of water to their farm and homestead. The tower got its water supply by using an ingenious device known as a hydraulic ram pump. The ram pump required no power, but instead used the kinetic power of falling water itself from a nearby stream to pump water uphill to be stored in the water tower. Once stored in the tank, it was gravity-fed across the property.

The ram pump was invented in 1772 by a Frenchman to pump water uphill to his family’s paper mill. Ram pumps are still in operation today, used in developing countries and on farms to cheaply get fresh water to livestock.

What it Looks Like

The tower itself is a wooden structure, 30 feet tall, with a 12 foot square base. It has two distinct sections, with the flared “head” section sitting on top of the base. Both the head and the base have slightly sloping walls and are covered with clapboard (base) and shingles (head). There is an interior staircase to give access to the tank. The roof is now corrugated metal. The base has two doors and one window and originally held the hydraulic pump (which was replaced by an electric pump at some point).

Fire and Rebirth

A 1978 fire destroyed most of the Rogers homestead, but the tower was untouched. It fell into disrepair until the town decided to act. In 2001, the town got it listed on the National Register of Historic Places. That allowed it to get a grant from the Maine Historic Preservation Commission. The town hired a timber frame preservation contractor who stabilized the structure in 2002. Then additional interior and exterior restoration work was completed in 2005. The tower today looks much like it originally looked in 1906. The town is even hoping to install a miniature working model of the hydraulic ram pump on the ground floor of the structure for educational purposes, though the nearby stream that powered the original ram pump can’t do the job anymore. On a visit in November, 2025, the tower was in decent shape but needed some shingle & wood repairs.