Along State Highway 21 in the town of Omro, a seven-story tower of tan brick rises out of the back of a farmhouse built around 1870. It looks like it belongs in a city. It was built for foxes.
The Cole Watch Tower went up in 1935, during the boom years of Wisconsin’s fox-ranching industry, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. That industry ran from about 1920 to 1945. In those years, Wisconsin supplied more than half of the fox pelts sold in the U.S. fur trade.
Why a tower
Foxes are shy. Breeders who wanted to watch their animals without spooking them built towers like this one, on the advice of the American National Fox Breeders Association.
The Oshkosh firm Auler, Jensen and Brown designed the Cole tower. It is a steel-frame building with stepped-back levels, plain banded walls, and concrete belts marking each floor. Next to the old Italianate farmhouse, it looks out of place.
Each floor had a job. The second and third floors were living quarters. The next three held storage. At the top, an observation room looked out over rows of fox pens that sloped away from the house.
One of the last
The fox business declined in the mid-1940s, and most farmers tore their towers down. This one survived. The historical society calls it a rare surviving example of a structure that was once common in Wisconsin.
The Cole Watch Tower was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 9, 1978.
