When I began
watercolor lessons, the first scene I painted was of a windmill at sunset. Not
original nor very good, but I love both windmills and sunsets. Although they’re
difficult to find now, I love the old wooden frame style windmill best. I also
miss the song a windmill sings during a breezy day or evening. With the windows
open, the sound is a lullaby at bedtime. Don’t get me wrong, I love modern
conveniences, but they’re a trade-off. We lose something with each part of our
past that disappears.
Due to my love for
the life-giving machines, I included them in two of my books. BRAZOS BRIDE has
been released in 2012 and re-released as part of a boxed set: MEN OF STONE
MOUNTAIN: MICAH, ZACH, JOEL. And TEXAS LIGHTNING, a time travel in progress, in which the heroine loves the sound of windmills. These books led to research about windmills which involved more than
just loving to look at and listen to them.
Over 80,000 working
windmills are estimated to be working now in Texas. You can’t drive on any road
without seeing them in the distance. They are of particular service to ranchers
in the arid regions. Land that once was almost useless to ranchers became
valuable once windmills were erected. The windmill has come to be one of the
symbols of ranching and cowboys. Once I started researching them, I was
surprised the type I have come to love was not as old as I’d suspected.
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| Range windmill purchased from Kozzi |
Before the introduction of windmills to Texas and the West,
inhabitable land was confined to areas where a constant water supply was
available. There was no way for vast areas to be settled without a life-giving
supply of water. The coming of the windmill made it possible to pump water from
beneath the ground, and soon whole new areas were opened up to settlers. The
first windmills were of the European style, built by Dutch and German
immigrants for grinding meal and powering light industry. What settlers needed
most, however, was a windmill that pumped water.
Because of its bulk and need for constant attention, the
European windmill was impractical for this purpose. The solution to this
problem came in 1854, when Daniel Halladay (Halady or Halliday) built the first
American windmill in Ellington, Connecticut. He added to his mill a vane, or
"tail," as it was called by cowhands, that functioned to direct the
wheel into the wind. The wheel was a circle of wood slats radiating from a
horizontal shaft and set at angles to the wind, designed so that centrifugal
force would slow it in high winds; thus, the machine was self-regulating and
operated unattended. Its simple direct-stroke energy converter consisted of
only a shaft and a small fly wheel to which the sucker rod was pinned. This
compact mechanism was mounted on a four-legged wood tower that could be
constructed over a well in one day.
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| Triple windmills purchased from Kozzi |
Railroad companies immediately recognized windmills as an
inexpensive means of providing water for steam engines and for attracting
settlers to semi-arid regions through which they planned to lay track. By 1873
the windmill had become an important supplier of water for railways, small
towns where there were no public water systems, and small farms. Many of the
very early mills were crude, inefficient, homemade contraptions. One of the
popular makeshift mills was a wagon wheel with slats nailed around it to catch
the wind, mounted on half an axle. The axle was fastened securely to a post
erected beside the well. A sucker rod was pinned to the edge of the hub. It was
stationary and worked only when the wind blew in the right direction. The windmills
used later on the big ranches were the more dependable factory-made windmills.
Windmills moved to the ranches with the use of barbed wire
in the late 1870s. At first the water holes, springs, creeks, and rivers were
fenced, so that the back lands had no access to water. In the midst of the fence
cutting and fighting, some ranchers began drilling wells and experimenting with
windmills. Most of these experiments were unsuccessful, however, due to lack of
knowledge concerning the proper size of the windmill in relation to the depth
and diameter of the well. One of the earliest successful experiments was made
eight miles north of Eldorado, in Schleicher County, Texas by Christopher C.
Doty, a nomadic sheepman. Doty moved his flock into that area and found
abundant water in shallow wells. By 1882, however, a drought had dried his
wells; he ordered a drilling rig from Fort Scott, Arkansas, bored a
fifty-two-foot well, and erected a Star windmill, which successfully supplied
water for his 4,000 head of stock.
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| Lone windmill at sunset Purchased from Kozzi |
Watering stock with windmills spread rapidly. Eastern land
speculators began buying, fencing, and running stock on the land until it
became ripe for colonization. Among the first of these speculators to
indirectly bring windmills to North Texas was the Magnolia Cattle and Land
Company, organized by Maj. Willa V. Johnson, In 1884 the company bought
two-thirds of the state-owned land in Borden County, land which had natural
water resources and had long been unofficially claimed for grazing by
Christopher Columbus Slaughter. Once Johnson fenced the land, Slaughter was
forced into the use of windmills to supply water for his cattle. By 1886 the
Matador Land and Cattle Company (where years later my husband’s uncle worked)
began using windmills to water stock.
The largest of the Eastern land speculators, the Capitol
Syndicate, began using windmills on its XIT in 1887. One of their windmills was
believed to be the world's tallest; it was made of wood and was a total height
of 132 feet. A Texas historical marker at Littlefield marks the site of a
replica of the world's tallest windmill built on the XIT Ranch. The original
windmill blew over in 1926. By 1900 the XIT had 335 windmills in operation.
Not until the King Ranch began extensive use of the windmill
in 1890 did that the practice began to spread rapidly over that area. By 1900
windmills were a common sight in the Texas and the West. Inhabitable land was
no longer limited to regions with a natural water supply. The windmill made the
most remote areas habitable.
The use of windmills brought about two of the most colorful
characters of the West, the driller and the windmiller, and altered the
lifestyle of another, the range rider. The driller was usually a loner and
seldom seen by anyone except the range rider and windmiller. He followed the
fence crews and guessed at where he might find water, then bored wells with his
horse-powered drilling rig. When the driller was successful the windmiller
followed and set up a mill. Owners of the larger ranches usually employed
several windmillers to make continuous rounds, checking and repairing
windmills. The windmillers lived in covered wagons and only saw headquarters
once or twice a month. The early mills had to be greased twice a week, and this
was the range rider's job. He kept a can (or beer bottle) containing grease
tied to his saddle. When he rode up to a mill that was squeaking, he would
climb it, hold the wheel with a pole until he could mount the platform, and
then let the wheel turn while he poured grease over it.
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| The lonely windmiller |
The range rider was always in danger of attacks from swarms
of wasps, which hung their clustered cells beneath the windmill's platform;
there was the added danger of falling from the tower when such attacks
occurred. The windmill industry's shift in 1888 to the backgeared, all-steel
mill caused heated debates in Texas livestock and farming circles. Most
ranchers and farmers welcomed the new steel windmill because its galvanized
wheel and tower held up better in harsh weather; also, its gear system was
better able to take advantage of the wind, thus enabling the windmill to run
more hours per day. The backgeared mill could also pump deeper and
larger-diameter wells. Those who favored the old wood mill argued that the
steel mill was more likely to break because of its high speed, that it was not
as easily repaired as the wood mill, and that when parts had to be ordered the
steel mill might be inoperative for days. Though sales of wood mills continued,
they declined steadily, so that by 1912 few were being sold.
The last major development in the windmill came in 1915. A
housing that needed to be filled with oil only once a year was built around the
mill's gears. This relieved the range rider of his biweekly greasing chores and
somewhat diminished the windmiller's job. Because of the dependability of this
improved windmill, worries over water shortages were eased for the rancher,
farmer, and rural dweller. This mill was the prime supplier of water in rural
Texas until 1930, when electric and gasoline pumps began to be widely used.
Though Texas became the largest user of windmills in the
United States, there were never more than three active manufacturers of
windmills in Texas at one time. Windmills remain an important supplier of water
for Texas cattlemen. The King Ranch in the late 1960s kept 262 mills running
continuously and 100 complete spares in stock. Stocking spare mills is a common
practice among ranchers who depend on the windmill to supply water for cattle
in remote pastures. One important ranch worker is the man who rides—or
drives—from windmill to windmill lubricating the gears and making repairs.
Because the windmill has been confined for the most part to
remote areas, it has become a symbol of a lonely and primitive life, fitting
for the pioneer Texans it first served and the cowboys about whom we love to
read. Let me leave you with one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite
groups: Sons of the Pioneers with “Cool, Clear Water.”
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