Sandusky City Street Sprinklers

Pictured above is an old water sprinkling apparatus, seen outside of the old Sandusky Water Works before that structure was demolished. Water from the barrel was sprinkled along unpaved streets to help keep the dust down. It appears that a rider could sit on the seat alongside the barrel, and the cart would have been drawn by a horse. The street sprinkling process also kept the city air a little healthier, as it diluted the amount of manure and urine left on the streets from horses used to draw buggies and carriages before automobiles became the more common mode of transportation. 

Gottlieb Epple was one of the men employed as a street sprinkler in Sandusky.

Below is the listing for the Epple and Son business in the 1908 Sandusky City Directory:

An article in the May 1, 1901 issue of the Sandusky Register announced that the beginning of May would also be the beginning of water sprinkling for the season.

Eventually street sprinkling became obsolete as most of the city’s streets became paved.