After 103 years watching over Otis Orchards, 60-foot tower comes crashing down

At 2:30 a.m. Saturday, Pierre Soffe awoke to the loudest noise he had ever heard.

A thunderous avalanche shook his house, broke a window and terrified both him and his cat.

When he put on his coat and went outside to see what had happened, he found that a 60-foot-tall river-rock tower that had watched over Otis Orchards for more than a century had collapsed.

A pile of boulders leaned against the side of his home, and a cracked turret was all that remained.

“I really felt like guardian angels were watching out for me,” he said.

That tower, which was on his small farm on Ashton Road near the Spokane River, had long been a landmark that could be seen for miles. He said it was common for visitors he didn’t know to stop by and say they used to live nearby and remembered the tower or had played in it as children.

It once had a wooden staircase that spiraled up and led to a view of the greater Spokane Valley area.

But before the tower fell, only a family of pigeons enjoyed the scenery because the staircase seemed rickety and unsafe.

Over the last five years, Soffe had looked into restoring the tower and finding more about its history, but he couldn’t afford the estimated $250,000 it would have cost. He had been working with the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum to apply for a grant to repair the structure but had not obtained one.

Jayne Singleton, executive director of the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum, first encountered the structure when she was photographing old stone structures in Otis Orchards. She nicknamed the tower “The Sentinel” and considered it one of the few constants in the Valley, as the carpet of apple trees and old farms disappeared around it.

“(It) was in a sense a witness to all the change that’s happened,” she said.

She said the tower was likely built from the stones farmers cleared from their fields to make room for crops. Otis Orchards had notoriously rocky soil that farmers had to clear to make the land usable. Many of those rocks ended up being the foundation for homes in the same area or were used as cornerstones for fields.

The tower was built by Hugo and Fred Barth, brothers who immigrated to the United States from Germany in the early 20th century. They were among a large number of German immigrants who settled in Otis Orchards and were stone masons who also had orchards. The tower may have provided water for crops or a nearby mansion, and it once had a windmill on top.

Soffe and Singleton have also heard the brothers built the tower in a time of growing anti-German sentiment as World War I was gearing up and used it to keep watch on the area.

The tower looked over their orchard, their home, Mica Peak and Spokane Valley.

The brothers lost their farm in 1929, several months before the stock market crashed, and moved to Seattle, where they become gardeners. Singleton said records indicate that is where they spent the remainder of their lives. Since then, the tower has passed through the hands of at least nine other property owners before Soffe purchased it.

Soffe said he’s lived on the property for about 18 years, but didn’t see serious signs of deterioration until about five years ago, after a major windstorm. He contacted the Spokane Historical Society and had a structural engineer look at the property but could not afford to make any serious changes on his own.

He said this wet winter likely expedited the deterioration, but he was shocked when it fell.

While he had hoped to save it, he is relieved he doesn’t have a 60-foot hazard leaning over his house.

“There is a little part of me that is sad, it was a beautiful structure,” he said. “But because of the fact that I knew deep down it was becoming an increasing source of liability, now that it’s down and I don’t have to worry about the liability and incredible safety factor, I’m honestly relieved.”

He said one of his neighbors who works in landscaping has offered to help him clean up the avalanche of rocks in his backyard, and he’s working with the Spokane Valley Heritage Museum to see if some sections of the tower can be saved.

Singleton said she’s hoping a small section of concrete that was over the door, which had the year the tower was built, 1917, and a design, can be saved and turned into something new. Right now, she thinks it could become a commemorative wall, possibly built with some of the stones. She said the museum also hopes to find a way to display the tower’s crown.