Expedition Team: Jacque Kelly, Dave Miller Expedition Date: March 2017
This roadside attraction is an engineer’s dream to tour. The Waterworks is a state of the art water treatment facility for the growing city of Cincinnati built in 1906 on the Ohio River. It originally had 1,400 ton tanks pumping 30 million gallons of water per day. Until replaced, these 104 foot tall tanks ran for 57 years. Jacque posed by the famous crank and flywheel contraction, a key component of this facility. A large pipe leads across the Ohio River to a small station on the Kentucky side. On the Ohio side, the pumps, pipes and floor are 100 feet below the Ohio River. The next to last photo shows one summer in the early 1900’s when the Ohio River was very low due to a drought and large riverboats could not sail on the river.