Windmill Song

February 2006

Settlers of the Great Plains often found that water was harder to get at their new homes than where they used to live. To solve this problem, inventors re-imagined wooden windmills as water pumpers for the Midwest. 

Instead of the giant wheels of Holland's windmills, the American windmills had a smaller wheel of wooden blades that turned to catch the wind. These machines could easily pump water from deep wells. The windmill rapidly became an essential piece of agricultural equipment and a key to a better life in the Midwest. 

The Aermotor, brought to market in the late 1880's, was one of the first all-steel windmills. With a revolutionary set of gears and a carefully engineered ability to respond to the slightest puff of wind, the Aermotor was a reliable and popular machine. It is still manufactured today.

 Dempster was another major windmill manufacturer, and there were many others. Windmills made by the hundreds of competitors in the windmill business can still be seen and enjoyed in the collections of Nebraska towns, museums, and individuals.

In old images of Nebraska, I notice that many citizens of Nebraska's small towns had windmills in their backyards, even into the 1930's and 1940's.

Every ranch child of the Nebraska Sandhills has the windmill's song embedded in his memory. It's a repetitive melody with the tempo set by the wind, a creak and a groan as the mill turns and the sucker rod moves, and an alternating gush and trickle as the water pours out. It was the soundtrack of my childhood.

As the windmill pumped, the fresh, cold water poured out of a horizontal pipe that extended a couple of feet beyond the edge of the stock tank. To get a thirst-quenching drink, we cupped our hands under the water flow and leaned over the tank to drink from them.  It was best not to drink at the moment in the pump cycle with the strongest gush of water from the pipe. That could instantly fill a nose with water.

The overflow from the water tank almost always created a windmill pond. The tank and pond supported a wetlands flora and fauna greatly different from the surrounding landscape. Waterbirds chirped around the edges of the pond. Frogs sang, and dragonflies hovered above the water. 

We had a windmill in the greater yard around our house, barn, and other buildings. Its tank was positioned to provide water to cattle on both sides of a fence that divided two pastures. My sister and I spent hours in my childhood, making aquariums in a quart jar with snails and moss from the windmill tank, and playing around the windmill pond. On a hot day, getting a bit wet was a bonus.

Grandpa Harry Sees had goldfish in the big wooden windmill tank in his barnyard. I think they were large, but probably not as monstrously huge as they seemed when I was little

By the 1960s, electric pumps had taken the place of windmills in the farmlands of Iowa and Illinois. My father had a small business in rebuilt windmill motors from Iowa. He became acquainted with a retired plumber from central Iowa. This fellow drove around Iowa's farmlands, purchasing unused windmills to restore. His son climbed the old windmill towers and helped him get the motors down. He preferred Aermotors, but he occasionally bought Dempsters, too. 

When the rebuilder in Iowa had a batch of windmill motors ready, my dad took the pickup and trailer and hauled them home. I think he advertised them in the local paper at times, but mostly, the neighbors all knew that if they had windmill trouble, Charlie Hill probably had a good rebuilt motor on hand that he would sell them at a reasonable price.

Now sun power is beginning to replace wind power. Solar panels can run a pump, and ranchers don't have to climb a windmill tower to service them. The windmills of the Nebraska Sandhills may fall into disrepair and disuse, just as they did in Iowa and Illinois a few generations ago.