A temperature of maximum density near 260 K at 1 atm has been found for the soft sticky dipole (SSD) water model in molecular dynamics simulations. The parameters of SSD have been optimized to reproduce the density of water as well as other structural, thermodynamic, dielectric, and dynamic properties at room temperature and 1 atm. Remarkably, this simple model is able to reproduce the anomalous temperature dependence of the density using parameters optimized at room temperature. Furthermore, these results indicate that the tetrahedral nature of water is important in determining this anomalous behavior. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.