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The centerpiece of Old Town Eureka has been restored!

The Gazebo fountain was flowing Monday after months of effort by Tristan Salvatore, a city worker who has painstakingly repaired the finicky water feature.

Salvatore said the project required “every bit of my 20 years experience in construction,” when speaking to the Outpost Thursday.

“It was kind of a nightmare.”

His deep dive this summer included sand blasting and polishing tarnished brass fountain heads, repairing earthquake-caused cracks in the pool’s wall, replacing the pump system, installing two filtration systems and new electrics.

His favorite part is the spiral waterfall, “the most peaceful part of the fountain,” which now pumps out 200 gallons a minute thanks to a new drain tube and pipe redesign.

The fountain dates back to 1974, according to Eureka Times-Standard reporting on its construction, and Salvatore found prints from 1981 while working. He said time had taken its toll on the systems. He found a lot of band-aid solutions; a wrong motor here, leaks improperly fixed there.

“People don’t know how to maintain fountains here, it’s not a really common thing,” he said, pointing out there are fewer pools here than in Southern California. Salvatore owned a pool remodeling company there for two decades, Honest T’s Pool Repair, and moved here to raise his son.

City staff were excited to hire him to repair the fountain because of his experience.

He said the project took so long because he wanted to fix every part of the system.

“I mean, we’ve been fixing this off and on for the 20 years that I’ve been here,” City Manager Miles Slattery told the Outpost.

When the fountain routinely broke, the city typically sent someone from the wastewater department, but their expertise is a bit outside of the water feature world.

Slattery said they decided to give the fountain one last chance with Tristan, with this summer’s work being the most substantial fixes the city has undertaken to date.

Slattery said repairing the fountain cost five to ten thousand dollars, not counting staff time. This is thousands of dollars less than a redesign, he said, an idea that’s been floated in the past.

“It’s an attraction for folks down there. We want to maintain it. We just want to make it so that it’s less costly, and so this fix — we’re hoping that it’s not going to take more staff time to continually engage it,” he said.

The fountain was originally installed as part of an effort to revitalize then-deteriorating Old Town as a major tourist, shopping and recreation area, according to reporting from the Times-Standard.

Salvatore said the fountain is on a timer from 10-6. It can be turned on remotely now, and maintenance just requires cleaning the filtration system every couple months and adding chlorine.

Since he’s been there working every day, he’s talked to many people passing by. Some were worried he was ripping out the fountain, or shared stories about seeing the fountain. They took their prom pictures there, or splashed in the water as a kid.

Seeing the fountain running now, “people are pretty excited,” he said.