Giant prairie pinwheels are still blowing in the wind more than a century later.
John Cox may have been a stranger when he strolled up the driveway of a home in rural southwest Oregon, but he quickly became a friend when the owners learned who he was…one of just a few people in the country who knew how to repair a bit of history on their land.
Tom and Doris Walker had purchased this acreage primarily because on it was a 100-year old windmill that had at one time been used to pump water. Years of neglect had taken a toll, and the old windmill no longer turned. Cox, who collects and restores windmills to their original conditions, just happened to be driving by that day, saw the old windmill, and couldn’t resist stopping to take a closer look.
Walker, a machinist, and Cox, a retired millwright, had no trouble determining that it was an Aermotor model built in 1899, and it was missing the brake, the part that controls the fan’s speed so the mill won’t self-destruct in high-wind conditions. Cox had a windmill just like it, and he was able to help Walker, the machinist, duplicate the part necessary to put the old windmill back in operation.
At home in Eagle Point, Oregon, Cox has collected and repaired 18 windmills that dominate his own rural landscape. All are in working condition, and most were made more than 100 years ago. Although each one could be harnessed to perform its expected function, only one of them is actually working over a well. It pumps water for him and his wife Sandra at their home on land his parents purchased back when he was in seventh grade.
“Out here we have a few hours of brisk-enough winds blowing each day,” he says. “It wouldn’t be practical to expect all these windmills to do that much pumping continually. Besides, we’d have to drill a well for each mill to work above.”
The importance of windmills in the settling of the American and Canadian West cannot be overstated. Without the water they provided there would have been few towns and almost no farms or ranches established in the 19th and early 20th centuries as people moved west with their horses and cattle. One newspaper writer in 1899 said that in the 500 miles from Omaha to Denver a traveler was never out of the sight of a windmill.
Some windmills were capable of powering corn shellers, small feed mills, and even sawmills. Manufacturers such as the original New Holland Machine Company saw the potential of wind power added air motors to their product lines.
But even as New Holland entered the windmill business just after 1900, two new power sources were already on the scene. Gasoline engines, followed a few years later by electric motors, offered flexibility and portability the windmills could not match.
New Holland put its windmill business on hold almost before it got started and concentrated instead on its successful feed mills and single-cylinder gasoline engines.
One of John Cox’s windmills features an attachment that shells corn, and when hooked up to the right belts and pulleys, can even saw wood. Because it’s a power mill, it requires a higher speed-gear ratio to turn the saw fast enough to cut.
A friend sold him his first windmill 20 years ago, the 1899 Aermotor he used to repair the Walker windmill. Another one made by the same manufacturer in 1897 is 10-feet in diameter and the only one of its kind known to exist today.”
Still another of Cox’s treasurers is a 10-footer made by U.S. Wind. Originally known as the Gem, these windmills are extremely rare, probably because, like many mills at that time, it had design problems that caused it to wear out early.
In 1897 Aermotor made a 10-foot mill of a new design with the intension that the new design would be used in 8 and 16-foot models the next year. But it had major problems and was made for only a couple months.
Early mills and some home-made units had to be turned by hand into the wind every time the wind changed direction. Improved models came along quickly to correct that. First tail vanes were used and worked like a weather vane to position the fan facing the wind. Among Cox’s collection is a wooden-bladed Baker Monitor Model L Vaneless, that needs no tail vane to turn it to the win
“Lots of collectors settle on a favorite manufacturer. They get used to the way that brand works, then trade for other mills the company once made,” Cox said. “I don’t like being exactly like everyone else. I’ll include a variety among mine.”
To pump water out of the ground, the fan of a windmill turns a horizontal shaft to provide power. The horizontal turning motion is changed to vertical using gears and pitmen arms, which give the pump rod its up and down strokes. At this point it draws water to the surface just as a hand pump does, raising the water by suction on each stroke as a sucker rod inside a cylinder continues to move up and down in the water below the surface.
Two names are generally associated with development of American windmills. Daniel H. Halladay patented his “Windcatcher” in 1854, and manufactured it under the company name U. S. Wind. Laurence Wheeler received a patent for the Eclipse in 1867, and his business eventually became part of Fairbanks Morse & Company.
Giant railroad windmills were a common sight along early rail lines. Labor crews first drilled wells, then assembled the mills, and erected them above the water sources. They provided the large amounts of water needed by steam locomotives.
World War I ushered in an acute metal scarcity for making weapons, and the U.S. government eyed the plentiful iron content of the large and aging 16 to 30-foot diameter railroad windmills. "But World War II mostly did the mills in,” Cox said. “By then electricity had begun replacing wind power for pumping water, and more railroad windmills disappeared. The mill manufacturers started producing firearms out of scrap iron. It was all part of the war effort.”
Cox attends windmillers’ trade fairs held annually in cities across the West and Midwest. There he networks with fellow windmill hobbyists who help one another find more mills or elusive parts. The 2007 convention in Lamar, Colorado, drew 279 adults. The next wind millers Trade Fair will be held in El Dorado, Kansas, June 3-5, 2009.
As with most antiques, the pursuit of more windmills and vital parts never stops. “Some people go to garage sales, I visit rural, windy areas,” Cox said. “I also rely on word of mouth. People who ask me to fix their windmills usually know others who’ve located parts they want to sell or trade.”
It is his hope that this article and photographs will inspire someone to “pull an old mill out of a fence row, fix it, reinstall it, and let it turn.”
Adapted from an article by Florence Blake
Photos by Saxon Holt