History

The Lundgren Coffee & Chicory Company, a regional roaster supplying diners and rail crews across central Minnesota, commissioned the thermos in 1955 to advertise its Highway 10 roasting plant to passing motorists. The design was adapted from a standard standpipe blueprint by a water tower fabrication firm in St. Cloud, which explains both the structure's excellent wind rating and its interior ladder, a feature no thermos requires.

Construction cost $48,500, a sum raised jointly by the company and the Highway 10 Merchants Association, which had concluded in a 1954 feasibility memorandum that motorists were 'passing through Nyquist Lake at speeds inconsistent with commerce.' At the July 1957 dedication, a spigot at the base dispensed actual coffee, gravity-fed from an urn concealed in the maintenance room, and the first cup was poured for the district highway engineer.

A hailstorm in June 1964 left a prominent dent in the cap, and the 1965 repair repainting introduced the green tartan pattern now considered the structure's defining feature. Company records suggest the plaid was chosen because the painting contractor had recently completed a supper club and possessed the necessary masking experience.

Lundgren entered receivership in 1971, and the village of Nyquist Lake acquired the thermos for back taxes. A 1972 naming contest drew 312 entries and produced 'The People's Thermos'; the runner-up, recorded in the council minutes, was 'The Big Thermos.' The village has maintained it since, most substantially through a $92,000 restoration in 1989 funded by a state scenic byway grant and the bake sales of the Thermos Preservation Auxiliary.

Local Legends

Residents report that on cold mornings the thermos is warm to the touch on the south side, which some attribute to residual vacuum properties. The public works director has noted, in three separate newsletter items, that the south side is the sunny side.

The losing entries from the 1972 naming contest are widely believed to be sealed in the base. The village clerk states that they are in a folder, and that the folder is available upon request, and that no one has requested it.

It is said the thermos was briefly the tallest structure between Minneapolis and Fargo. A 1974 survey conducted by a grain elevator cooperative found this to be untrue, and the claim is now phrased locally as 'among the tallest.'

The Controversy

The 1998 repainting opened what the Nyquist Lake Courier called 'the tartan question': whether the green and black bands of the plaid had been transposed relative to the 1965 original. A resident's slide collection supported the transposition theory, but the original painting contractor had retired to Arizona and declined to rule. The council resolved the matter by declaring the current pattern official 'regardless of precedent,' a phrase that appears nowhere else in the village code.

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