Cole Watch Tower

The Cole Watch Tower is one of Wisconsin’s strangest surviving reminders of the state’s once-booming fox-farming industry. Built in 1935 on a farm west of Omro, the seven-story steel-frame tower dates to the height of Wisconsin’s fox-ranching boom, which lasted from about 1920 to 1945. During that era, Wisconsin supplied more than half of the fox pelts used by the U.S. fur industry. Fox breeders followed recommendations from the American National Fox Breeders Association to build observation towers that allowed them to monitor the naturally shy animals without disturbing them. Most of those towers disappeared after the fur market collapsed in the mid-1940s, making the Cole Watch Tower a rare surviving example.

Rising in stepped levels behind an Italianate farmhouse built around 1870, the tower is an unusual collision of rural Wisconsin and industrial design. Its tan brick-and-tile exterior, steel frame, concrete bands, and stark stepped profile look almost futuristic beside the traditional farmhouse. The second and third floors contained living quarters, while the next three floors were used for storage. At the top, an observation room overlooked the rows of fox pens that once covered the land behind the house. The property was purchased by Florent Shepard Cole in 1924, when he began raising silver foxes, and the original wooden observation tower was replaced by the much larger steel-and-brick structure in 1935. The Cole Watch Tower was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 in recognition of its importance to Wisconsin’s agricultural and industrial history.

The tower has also accumulated a few colorful local stories over the years. One legend claims it was built partly to watch for outlaws such as John Dillinger, who supposedly passed through the area and had an interest in the valuable foxes as potential sources of fur for girlfriends’ coats. Another darker story says that the farmer who built the tower hanged himself in it after the collapse of the fox-pelt market.