I live southeast of town and can see two towers when I look toward Eau Claire. One’s the TV tower on Hastings Way. But there’s also a tower on the edge of Putnam Heights. Any info or history on either?
    Thanks for asking! WEAU-TV went on the air in 1953, with “Hopalong Cassidy” and “Whatever the Weather” starring UW-Eau Claire’s Gil Tanner. For a couple of years, TV-13 broadcast from a 500-foot tower directly behind the station.

In 1956, WEAU built the 1,000-foot tower standing on the verge of Altoona. On the night of August 29, 1957, a physician named Charles Kemper heard reports that a massive bird kill was taking place near the tower. (No coincidence, Kemper served as president of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology.) A 1999 story in Animals magazine quoted Kemper: “A lady living close to the TV tower noticed that it was raining birds. They were coming down on her roof, garage, and lawn.”

Plague, bird flu, poisoning, electrocution? No. The birds were running into the tower itself. In one of the world’s longest-lasting studies of bird mortality, Dr. Kemper collected dead birds from around the tower for 37 years, from 1957 to 1994, keeping meticulous records all the while. During that period the kill totaled 121,560 birds of 123 species.

The number of birds found annually has dropped in recent decades. Might be part of an overall decline in the number of migrating songbirds (if they’re not around to migrate, they’re not running into things). But, Kemper said, it might also be this: “A colony of gulls established itself near that tower in recent decades, and they may be scavenging the bird carcasses before anyone else sees them.” That flock of seagulls often hangs around Kmart, just like I did when I was in high school.

In 1981, TV-13 built a 1,998-foot tower down by Fairchild; it’s the tallest man-made structure in Wisconsin – and in a huge tie for the fourth-tallest structure in the U.S. (It’s hard to get approval for towers over 2,000 feet, so there are something like 19 towers in America all the same height as WEAU’s Fairchild “stick.”)

But now here’s the weird part: The 1,000-foot Hastings Way tower is now topped by the digital transmitter for WQOW.

Don’t know much about the Putnam Heights tower at Rudolph Road and Mitchell Ave. It originally climbed the sky in the 1940s – a 246-foot “guyed” tower. (That is, it has a set of tensioned cables for support, as opposed to a free-standing tower.) My impression was that, at least back in the 70s and 80s, WISM (98.1 Classic Rock) used it as they spun the platters that matter.

Three or four years ago, Clear Channel Communications got a conditional-use permit to replace that oldie with a new, “enhanced” 340-foot guyed tower on the site. So that’s what you’re lookin’ at.

A neighbor claims there is a home on Third Street that was ordered through the Sears Roebuck catalog in 1908.  Did they really sell homes through the catalog?

You bet! Sears sold ready-to-assemble houses mail order – over 70,000 between 1908 and 1940 (so this would be a very early example). The kits, shipped by railroad, included all the materials needed, down to the nails and shingles. Add-ons to the basic model included the very-most-modern conveniences: central heating, indoor plumbing, electricity. I’m sure Eau Claire is dotted with Sears homes. They’re solid houses: good materials and well-designed.

• Got a local question? Send it (17 S. Barstow St.) or email it (mail@volumeone.org) and Frank will answer it!  Frank has lived in Eau Claire for most of the past 41 years. He is an editor and researcher at the Chippewa Valley Museum, which is open all year just beyond the Paul Bunyan Camp Museum in beautiful Carson Park. You should go there.