The initial water supply for the early settlers of Cedar Falls came from Dry Run Springs, located near the corner of Grand Boulevard and Gibson Street in what today is Pfeiffer Spring Park. Many settlers carried water from the springs for their drinking supplies. For other basic needs people used buckets to carry water from the Cedar River. Some of the more wealthy people of the area were able to use wooden barrels or casks tied to a wooden yoke and pulled by a bull or an ox. There were also a number of "draymen" who turned the transporting of water from both Dry Run Springs and the Cedar River into a profitable venture during the 1850s and 1860s. Obviously, during these early years, the acquisition of water was a very painstaking process that required great time and effort.

    The problem of obtaining water became very evident to city officials in 1859 when the first of several major fires broke out in the city. Some actions were taken by the city for a system to help put out fires, but having draymen drag barrels of water was not going to get the job done quickly enough, even with hundreds of volunteers. The final blow to the drayman system of acquiring water came in 1871, when the Overman block and its adjoining buildings in the heart of town burned during a great fire. After this disaster the city built two large cisterns and acquired a Silsby Steam Fire Engine to help battle fires and supply water throughout the city.

    Due to the success of the large cisterns built in 1871, the city council decided to construct a public water works plant in 1888, at the cost of $40,000. This plant utilized the never-ending flow of water coming from Dry Run Springs, which consisted of two sources of supply, Big Spring and Little Spring. The city made use of the twelve-inch flow of water coming from Big Spring for its water plant.

    Approximately one-third of a mile away, a brick building measuring twenty-six feet by eighty-four feet was built to serve as the water works plant. This building housed the engines, pumps, and boilers needed to treat and distribute the water throughout the city and was located at the present site of the Municipal Power Plant at the end of Twelfth Street. Water was pumped to a large cistern located outside the plant that was sixteen by eighteen feet. The cistern was made of brick and cement. A large wooden main made of two-inch planks connected the water supply from the cement-encased spring to the cistern. In 1996, some excavation in the area revealed that the main was still in excellent working condition at a depth of more than thirty feet.

    From the plant, water was pumped by two engines to what was then the highest point in the city. That point, more than two hundred feet above sea level, was located on Walnut Street between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets, some three-fourths of a mile away. There, a wooden water tower was built to provide water pressure for distribution throughout the city. More than two and a half million gallons of water could be pumped daily to the tower by the two engines in the plant. The total capacity of the new system with the cistern and the tower was one and a half million gallons when not in use. It is not known exactly how much water the tower and cistern each could hold, but the total of both combined was quite amazing for the time.

    Sometime between 1888 and 1920, longtime utility employee Chris Boyson saw the wooden structure and tank, "collapse and burst before his eyes." After this incident, a 100,000 gallon steel structure was built at the same location. This structure served the city until 1949 when the first two modern larger capacity towers were built within the city.

    In November of 1911 more than sixty cases of typhoid fever were reported in the Cedar Falls area. The majority of the cases were reported from the Iowa State Normal School, currently the University of Northern Iowa. Several students at the Normal School died of typhoid. The outbreak was blamed on bad water coming from Dry Run Springs and being put into the city’s water system. Although there was never any proof that water from the springs was the cause of the outbreak, action was taken by the city to prevent more cases from arising. Citizens were ordered to boil their water, and plans were made to dig new wells to contribute to the city’s water supply.