Windmills - Bev Russell, Library Director

(This column appeared in the August 5, 2007, Star-Herald)

Year’s ago—before DVD players, hand-held video games, and iPods—we parents had to keep our kids busy and entertained in the car on long trips. (Well, we didn’t have to keep them busy, but it lessened the number of times we said, "You kids cut it out, or I’m stopping this car!") When all books were read, coloring books colored and songs sung, our family sometimes played the "Windmill Game". There are multiple variations of this game (tractors, horses, combines, trucks, etc.), but this is one that my nieces taught us. Of course, the winner is the one who spots the most windmills. This game also led to arguments over whether a windmill was the same one spotted earlier from another angle. All car games seemed to end in an argument at which time I said, "You kids cut it out or I’m stopping this car!" I thought of this game while I was looking at the book, "American Windmills: An Album of Historic Photographs" by T. Lindsay Baker.

"American Windmills" is a classic coffee table book, and it is a huge kick for someone, like myself, who grew-up in rural Nebraska to peruse. It is a book that can be enjoyed reading cover to cover or just by browsing. The famous Simon Butcher photo collection, which is housed at the Nebraska Historical Society, insures that plenty of Nebraska photos abound. Simon Butcher made it his mission to photograph the Sodhouse Frontier in Custer County, Nebraska. Frankly, I preferred those photos of early Nebraska pioneers over other photos. They tell a story.

Two elements of Great Plains’ climate made the windmill a crucial factor in the development of the frontier—aridity and wind. The windmill used readily abundant wind power to provide water to the homesteads and the stock on the arid landscape. The incursion of the windmill onto the Great Plains greatly aided settlement of the plains.

Travelers on Interstate 80 frequently complain about Nebraska’s boring, flat landscape. Much the same was true of pioneers winding their way along the Overland Trails. The site of any vertical landmark was so rare that "Lone Tree" near Central City and Chimney Rock became renowned. (Travelers along the Platte River, in fact, eventually whittled Lone Tree to death by carving their initials in its trunk. The ever-present wind is slowing whittling Chimney Rock down to size also.) Because a person can look as far as the eye can see on the relatively flat plains, the vertical windmill left a lasting impression. Consequently it was the landscape that made the windmill an icon of the Great Plains.

More windmills and windmill history is related in "American Windmills" than just that of Nebraska. For those interested in the mechanical and business aspects of the windmill, chapters discuss manufacture, distribution, marketing, assembly and maintenance. The book deals with windmills in western ranching, farming, railroads, and urban settings. There is even a chapter on homemade windmills.

The photos are about more than windmills. They tell a story of a bygone era and a way of life. My favorite pictures included the following:

• A tornado approaching Mullinville, Kansas in a 1915 photo—windmill in the foreground.
• Corinne Baker dressed as a Perkins windmill in the chapter on marketing— very odd.
• A barn near Beatrice, Nebraska almost buried by a snowdrift with the loft, the peak, and a windmill sticking out the drift. We just don’t get snows like that anymore.
• Finally, a photo of a baptism in an earthen stock-watering tank near Petersburg, Texas illustrates the down-home religion of the early plains settlers.

My favorite windmill picture was not included in the book, however. It is of the windmills on the Watson Ranch north of Scottsbluff. For a nostalgic trip down memory lane read "American Windmills" by T. Lindsay Baker.

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