17” Windmills – A piece of history

Back in the late 1890’s there were a number of windmill companies in the Midwest.  As people began to develop agriculture in the Midwestern plains a source of good clean clear water was found 50 to 100 feet below the surface.  The Midwestern plains has few rivers.  Livestock was a part of farming and windmills were a part of raising cattle and hogs.  On just about every plains farm there was at least one windmill.  I grew up in Central Nebraska – we had a windmill at our main farm as well as at least one on several pasture lands we had for grazing cattle.  Water was pumped into cattle tanks from the windmills.  You could travel west to the sand hills and see hundreds of windmills in dozens of styles from a number of manufacturers out on the farms and ranches.

There were also windmills along the railways for the steam trains.  There are still quite a few operating windmills in western Nebraska and in the Sand Hills area however as time goes by the number become fewer and fewer.  In the Central Plains rural electricity became more available plus the water table dropped – the result was that deeper wells had to be drilled to get water.  The windmills could not pump water from these deeper wells.  Only about 100 feet was pretty much the maximum.  The windmills were replaced with electric submersible pumps in many areas.  Windmill manufacturers either went out of business or started making other things.  Windmill parts became difficult to find and windmill maintenance became more and more time consuming.

There are several museums and historic windmill collections around.  There is an annual event where people sell and swap windmills and windmill parts.  CLICK HERE for a link to the Windmill Trade Fair  and Windmill Museum to one of the windmill Museums. Here is a great site about windmills this Museum is in Lubbock Texas.  Here is another great resource if you are into windmills and windmill history – The Windmillers Gazette has some back issues and reprints.

This year the Windmill Trade fair was held in York Nebraska – Windmillers Trade Fair.   I really had hoped to attend this event this year but just could not get away.  I am hoping that there will photos up on one of the above site about this years Windmill event.

Something interesting to do is Google the various manufacturers represented by the 17” mini windmills – there is some very interesting information available.  There now are  7 of the “brand name mini windmills – Dempster and Eli being the most recent.  Others are the Currie, Fairbury, Heller Aller and  Kirkwood.  There are 7  others – the plain tailed 17”, the Aero, Stars and Stripes, Texas, Route 66, Kansas and the Commemorative models to make a total of 14 of the mini windmills available.   This Link will take you to where you can see the 14 made in the USA mini windmills that I carry.