Scratch WaterTower building

You should be able to draw plans from photos if you know some of the critical dimensions.  I assume you'd have better luck getting dimensions than plans (though I'd ask for copies of plans first to see what they offer).  You need, in these days of terrorism fears, to convince them of what you are doing.

To build a square mile, you'll be in awfully small scale, so neither plans nor measurements need to be that accurate.  I suspect a rod with a disk on it will suffice in that kind of scale (maybe 1:1000?)

I see your from the twin cities, the same here. I live over in Vadnais Heights and the square mile I wanted to recreate is over by HWY 61 and County Road E. It's very suburban up here so I thought making a square mile wouldn't be too difficult, but I now see that the original scale I was planning, 1:87 would be huge. I might have to scale down to just the proximity of the tower because the Water tower is the important part of the diorama.

I am working on a diorama of the Duluth ship canal, and chose 1:500.  I found a lot of stuff in that scale and 1:450th.  Gotten cars and trucks, and people.  A diorama that size would still be ten feet square, however.  You may find stuff in 1:1200 or 1:700, which would be smaller.  All these are model ship scales except the 1:450, which is a new super micro model train scale.