Engineers have long designed ellipsoidal water towers that look like giant tomatoes for sound structural reasons. The shape evenly distributes the weight of the water and requires less bracing than a flat tower. The towers stand on tall legs that look conspicuously like tomato vines, and their elevation provides the pressure that keeps water flowing from the taps below.
As America has built these towers over many decades, the custom has been to paint them something that obscures their tomato identity. In most circumstances, this is totally fine.
But not here in Sacramento.
Throughout its 66-year history, the water tower on the Sacramento River near Freeport Boulevard, has been trapped in a pedestrian silver coat of paint. It ironically stands next to Interstate 5, the artery on which more tomatoes are transported than any other in California and perhaps the world.
Even more unacceptable is how, for the last nine years, the tomato tower has been promoting a marketing slogan with these words emblazoned in black and green paint: “Welcome to Sacramento. America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital.”
This atrocious paint scheme evokes neither a farm nor a fork — and certainly not a tomato.
This tower is Sacramento’s most underutilized marketing device.
Alec Wasson, who represents the Tomato Products Wellness Council and is paid to be a “chief tomato evangelist” — only in Sacramento! — knows what we should do.
“Transforming the tower into a tomato would give that story the bold, nationally recognizable symbol it deserves,” Wasson told me. “With a little (okay, a lot) of paint, Sacramento could turn the Farm-to-Fork slogan into something real, visible and unmistakable. A destination.”
An idea ahead of its time
A confession. I had this idea before, too. I think I was ahead of my time.
It was in 2003. I had been living in Sacramento for a dozen years. I had the same job at The Bee. The giant gray tower was a blank canvas, devoid of words. I suggested that Sacramento embrace the tomato. Stephanie Taylor, a renowned Sacramento-based artist then and now, sketched the tower’s red possibilities.
The Freeport water tower began its messaging evolution in 2005 with the slogan, “Welcome to Sacramento City of Trees,” June 28, 2005. Sacramento Bee/ Florence Low Florence Low The Sacramento Bee
The area council member at the time, the late Robbie Waters, loathed the idea. He was proud of securing what was then the city’s largest American flag for the top of the tower. “With all due respect, I do not feel this ‘tomato’ comes remotely close to the artwork she is so well known for,” he wrote in The Bee in April 2003.
Taylor’s memories of Waters can be summarized in two words: “Bah Humbug,” she emailed the other day.
“I thought it was a great idea,” she said of the tomato tower.
Waters wasn’t all wet. Credit him for converting the tower into a messaging device with city funds that Waters had set aside. The tower welcomed motorists to “The City of Trees” from 2005 to 2017. Then Sacramento switched slogans, as if a city can declare itself the lead of a national food movement. All while painted like a fading Christmas ornament.
The 2017 rebranding of the Sacramento water tower as a farm-to-fork capital was executed in words too small for many motorists to read, the structure remaining in a dust of silver. Andrew Seng aseng@sacbee.com
“The tomato embodies the full power of Sacramento’s Farm-to-Fork story,” Wasson said. Local farmers like Ray Yeung have their heirlooms featured in signature local restaurants such as Mulvaney’s B&L, whose owner, Patrick, has helped place the city on the global food map.
And then there is the most humble tomato of them all, the processing tomato. “Sacramento is California’s capital and the epicenter of the most important processing-tomato-growing region in the world,” Wasson said. What better way to remind motorists of that?
In 2003, the Sacramento Business Journal and Mike Testa of Visit Sacramento embodied a lack of civic confidence that Sacramento still hasn’t outgrown. They and others wrongly feared derision if the city painted the tower as a tomato.
An alternative: A true Farm to Fork tower
Sacramento could have showcased its Farm-to-Fork culinary life on the tower. Instead, the current message is a muddled mess. The words are too small to read as viewers pass by at 65 mph. The infrastructure remains a canvas waiting to be illustrated.
Sacramento-based artist Stephanie Taylor sketches a more compelling way to illustrate the region’s farm-to-fork heritage than merely stating so in words on today’s staid 66-year-old silver tower. Stephanie Taylor
It is Taylor’s stroke of genius to consider painting the tower in a cornucopia of our local produce. And look closely at the “t” in the much larger Sacramento font designed for drive-by viewing. Taylor had been commissioned in 1991 by a firm to create a similar mural for a location of some distinction. Ever heard of The Walt Disney Company and Disneyland Paris?
“All the bounty of this valley deserves to be represented, from the tomato to walnuts,” Taylor said.
And what better place?
As a preacher of fiscal discipline for Sacramento, I cannot make a full-throated case for using the general fund to paint the water tower as a tomato — or a vegetarian Thanksgiving. But maybe, just maybe, someday inspiration will strike.
We need a California food council or tomato magnate with deep pockets to recognize the tower’s untapped potential. Any Sacramento leader who fears such an opportunity should stick a fork in it.
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Tom Philp is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and columnist who returned to The Sacramento Bee in 2023 after working in government for 16 years. Philp had previously written for The Bee from 1991 to 2007. He is a native Californian and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.