Beginning in 1873, the U.S. Army Signal Service distributed weather forecasts to thousands of rural post offices as Farmers' Bulletins, and in 1881 signal flags replaced the bulletins. After radio broadcasting of weather forecasts emerged in the 1920s, use of the flags was discontinued, but coastal warning towers remained important for mariners. In 1898, President McKinley ordered the newly established U.S. Weather Bureau to erect a series of coastal warning towers to warn of approaching storms, and records indicate this tower was erected by 1900 as one of eight in North Carolina. Notices of impending storms were telegraphed from the U.S. Weather Bureau station in Norfolk, VA, and a local storm warning displayman showed warning flags by day and lanterns by night. In Washington, the first storm warning displayman was Mary Gallagher, wife of a town physician, and the tower was first erected in her backyard at 629 East Main Street, where she maintained the flag display well into her eighties. After her death in 1944, her neighbor Lossie Waters became the next displayman, the tower was moved to her backyard at 720 East Main Street, and during her nearly 40-year watch several notable hurricanes, including Hazel, Ione, Diane, and Donna, passed through the period of service. The National Weather Service discontinued the use of coastal warning display towers in 1989. The tower remained behind Lossie Waters's house until 2013, when the James Miller family donated it to the City of Washington, which restored it and moved it to its present location.