Comanche Lookout Park

The 4th highest elevation in the city, and with a stone tower, leads to all sorts of speculation.
The prevailing wisdom is that it's from the 1800s, and was a lookout post for spotting marauding Comanche Indians. They were a constant threat to early white settlers and have a reputation as being among the very meanest and bloodthirsty of all Native Americans.
But the BS story of this tower comes from those who never bothered to climb the hill it sits upon--it's a 10%+ grade in it's newly paved form and was a dangerous rocky climb not ten years ago.

If you actually get up next to the tower you'll see a prominent date of 1928 on it.
And if you had the luck I enjoy, you might run into a chatty woman who claims to have done her research in addition to actually having known the man who built it.
She said it was a water storage tank for his ranch.
Open at the top, I guess it could be best described as a decorative castle-inspired cistern.
This version doesn't exactly explain what look like rifle firing slots on every side, or the three boarded up windows on the north face.
I suppose I should do a little research of my own?


Now it's fenced-off to keep the dopers out, and there's a fine park with numerous walking and hiking trails all over and around the hill, and some picnic tables on the hilltop.
You can see the most of the city's northeast side--all the way to downtown a good 15+ miles away.

I wish I still lived nearby whenever there's a good thunderstorm.
A great place to shoot lightning photos if you're brave and/or crazy.