In August 2022 I read a story about James Rothers, the controversial mayor for all of 4 months in the west central Minnesota town of Kerkhoven. The story mentioned a landmark of sorts: a 54 foot tower made completely from cement that may or may not be destined to be torn down in the future. I’ll share more about the tower later in this blog. Not wanting to miss the opportunity to see this very unusual and storied “landmark”, I added it to my list of places to ride. So it was, on this very hot and sticky August day, that I rode to Kerkhoven.
The road seems to stretch on forever in much of west central Minnesota. Corn fields, beans, and the buzz of cicadas in the heat.
In 2015, Rothers built this tower. During that building process, Rothers sued the city of Kerkhoven for $4 million claiming he was unfairly treated by the city over the building permit issues. Ultimately, the city settled the case for $25,000.00, and Rothers came just $3,975,000.00 short of his goal. There have been many reasons given for the purpose of this tower, some of them boring and some of them more interesting. Some folks speculate that Rothers built it for no other reason than to irritate his ex-wife who just happened to live across the street from the tower. Some think the tower was built as a “fire tower” for the fire department to practice with. This doesn’t seem too likely though, because the tower is completely hollow inside and there are no floors. Plus, it’s dangerously close to another structure that would likely become a real casualty from any fires in the tower, practice or otherwise. Rothers’ official reason for building the tower was to advertise his business, a now bankrupt construction company that built grain silos throughout the Midwest.
Despite suing the city of Kerkhoven a year prior, Rothers was elected mayor of Kerkhoven in 2016. He resigned 4 months later after the city council became angry with him for not keeping his promise to tear down the odd tower. Unfortunately for Mr. Rothers, the city council wasn’t the only entity fed up with Rothers’ shenanigans: So was the federal government. Mr. Rothers was apparently defrauding creditors of his bankrupt construction company by hiding $1 million in assets with the help of his attorney. In December 2022, Rothers was convicted of federal bankruptcy fraud and sentenced to 2 years probation. His attorney was disbarred and sentenced to 18 months in prison. And still, the tower stands. Some residents in Kerkhoven apparently like the tower, perhaps for its novelty, or perhaps because of the traffic the half-dozen tourists who actually put such a destination on their go-to list generates, producing a little more income for local businesses. Despite some residents being fans of the tower, many other residents consider it an eyesore and want it torn down. In fact, some Kerkhoven residents still like Rother as a person, even if they don’t like the tower. Apparently, when he wasn’t defrauding his creditors, he sometimes did nice things. He once donated $40,000.00 in labor to rebuild the public swimming pool in town, and he rebuilt a barn that belonged to a local dairy farmer after it burned down without charging the farmer a cent.
Here’s the lunch that I ate a few blocks away from the tower in Kerkhoven’s city park. To the right of this shot is a very nice public swimming pool, the one rebuilt by Rothers’ construction company with donated labor. The banana took a beating in the saddle bag…
That’s it from the road. Thanks for looking!
