Wilhelminatoren - Valkenburg aan de Geul
N 50° 51.494 E 005° 49.910
31U E 699297 N 5637881
The Wilhelminatoren is a lookout tower in the southern Limburg town of Valkenburg in the Netherlands. The thirty-meter-high national monument from 1906 is located on the Heunsberg and offers a panoramic view of the South Limburg hill country.
Waymark Code: WMYKFC
Location: Limburg, Netherlands
Date Posted: 06/25/2018
Views: 16
The construction of the tower came about at the initiative of the Kurcomité Falcobergia, a competitive association founded in 1895 for the Valkenburg Society for Alien Traffic The Geuldal, founded ten years earlier. Both associations intended to promote the upcoming tourism in Valkenburg, but private interests also played a role. In 1898 Het Geuldal had already built a wooden lookout tower in the Rock Park on the Cauberg. This was demolished in 1910. The Wilhelminatoren arose in 1906 on the opposite Heunsberg, then on the territory of the municipality of Oud-Valkenburg. The partly neo-Gothic building of Limburg marl was commissioned by the Kurcommittee Falcobergia, designed by local architect Christiaan Alfons Prevoo.
In 1922 the Wilhelminatoren became the property of the Schetters-Bours family for an amount of 18,000 guilders, which would run a café-restaurant for three generations. Water pipes, electric light and telephone were installed and a wooden roof was placed on top of the tower so that the tower could also be climbed in bad weather, but this roof was blown off the tower several times. In 1930, an eight-meter high concrete cross with neon tubes was placed on top of the tower at the initiative of Father Ad Welters.
During the Second World War, the cross had to remain extinguished by order of the occupiers. In September 1944 the building was damaged by a grenade impact. In 1947 the tower was restored, but a year later, in the summer of 1948, the lightning struck the cross during a storm. It was not until 1950 that neon lighting could be restored, but it continued to cause problems. From 1954 the Wilhelminatoren was accessible by cable car from the Neerhem in the center of Valkenburg.
In 1968 the concrete cross, which had been extinguished since 1960, was removed. On the initiative of, among others, the current mayor Martin Eurlings, an action was started in 1969 to pay for a new cross. The new aluminum cross was placed on February 11, 1972. In 1989 a major restoration of the entire building took place again. From 1997, the exploitation of the café-restaurant, the cable car, the later toboggan run, and the Wilhelminagroeve, which is rented for paintball and laser games, are in the hands of the Geenen family.
Source Wikipedia (translated with Google)
Height of Look-Out Tower in feet: 100.00
Difficulty: 
Opening times and fees: Not listed
Parking Area: Not Listed
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Visit Instructions:
Please log only if you have been up there and you must include a photo of the scenic view from the top.