The 30 m high, wooden observation tower was built at the end of 1974 and put into operation in 1975. At that time, the state and district provided funds from full pots for certain, defined projects, more or less without thinking particularly about the purpose or even the follow-up costs.
The tower offered a beautiful view over Marienheide and the nearby Bruchertalsperre. With a particularly clear view you could even see the town hall tower in Remscheid and the church of Marialinden (City of Overath). However, it was used far too little for security, e.g. with an entrance ticket, to be an option. Therefore, the tower was always open and you could climb it at any time for free. On the other hand, there was also no supervision, and this led to some tragic events, so that it had to be locked very soon. You could borrow the key to climb it, but of course that was annoying and the tower was used less and less.
In the 1990s, it offered ideal conditions as a location for mobile communications equipment.
The care and maintenance of the tower would have been very complex, it would have devoured the construction costs several times over in just a few years. Since the church lacked the money for even more important things, very little was done for maintenance. And so in 2007 the wooden structure was so badly rotted that entry had to be forbidden. Since the condition also made renovation impossible, the decision was made to demolish the tower as soon as a solution for the mobile radio equipment was available.
At the beginning of 2009, the cell phone operators erected a steel tower next to it to house the radio systems. The observation tower was demolished at the end of February 2009.