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This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show. And now it's time for a look back to a device that helped win the West. Here's Jesse. with the story of windmill.
You can drive just about anywhere in America and find windmills if you're looking for it. The old metal ones you see in paintings of Texas or the Midwest. From the novelty lawn ornament variety for under a hundred bucks to the towering vintage water pumps accenting skylines next to barns or pastures and cornfields. Fully restored or in beautiful decay, working or not. These giant relics of Americana aren't just for decoration.
And the West couldn't have been won without them. Out of the mid-1850s, salesman John Burnham and machinist Daniel Halliday came up with the basic design that we would recognize today with the Halliday Windmill Company. It was relatively lightweight, nimble, that could swivel so it was always facing the wind and angle its blades to adjust for speed to avoid damage and strong winds automatically. Families and farms were able to pump water and store it in tanks anytime the wind was blowing. Right around the turn of the century, between the 1800s and the 1900s, there were over 600 windmill companies in the United States.
Tanya Meadow is with the American Windmill Museum in Lubbock, Texas. The American Windmill Museum was started in 1993 by a lady who was a teacher at Texas Tech University and Mr. Coy Harris, who is still our executive director. This building houses over 110 windmills. We've got windmills in here from as big as six foot wide.
which is the diameter of the wheel, how we measure a windmill, up to 25 feet wide in diameter. The old steam engines could only go 15 to 30 miles before they had to stop for water, depending on the terrain. You look at our little towns out here in West Texas, 15 to 30 miles down the road. There's a little town probably sprung up there because that's where the railroad had to stop in order for them to be able to get water for the steam engine.
So there was a major relationship between the railroads and the windmills. The windmill pumped the water to power the steam engines on the trains of the first Transcontinental Railroad out west. There's only one company that stood the test of time and continues to build them right here in the good old USA. and that would be the air motor company. The Air Motor Company started off in Chicago, Illinois, late 1800s.
And then in the 1950s they were purchased by a Texan. and the plant was moved to San Angelo, Texas, where it still is today. And they still make windmills today. Your larger ranches still use windmills. It's so much easier to put up a windmill for under $20,000.
than it is to try to run 20 miles of electrical line in order to be able to pump water for your large ranches. The 46s ranch is a big one. They actually have a full-time windmiller. One of the reasons that the air motor business is still in business today is they were always thinking, what can we do to make life easier? What can we do to make life better?
They were one of the first ones to create what was called the power mill. And the power mill would have been a different gearing system on a building outside the barn or one of your other outbuildings. And inside, underneath, there would be a grinder so that they could grind their corn and their wheats in order to be able to have their flours in order to do their breads and grains. They also were one of the first ones to enclose the gearbox. It has an oil reservoir underneath it.
And a big bonnet on top of it, and they said that you only had to oil your windmill once a year.
Now that's a major time saving as opposed to having to climb up there three or four times a day and put oil on the gears. Many of the windmills that dotted the Path out West were rendered obsolete by the 1930s as electric and diesel-powered trains took over the railways. Once electric pumps became popular, windmills on farms went neglected and began to break down over time without proper maintenance. But some people like to get these old wind pumps working again. like Rick Ritter of St.
Jacob, Illinois, He restored his Flint and Whaling brand windmill that's been standing on the family farm as long as he can remember. I just thought it was so cool. I never got to see it run till I was. 40-something when I fixed it. It always stood out here on the farm.
and never got used. It had weeds. Vines, morning glories, climbed all the way up to the top. And in probably 1990, I started cutting vines at the bottom and eventually. After all everything died on it, I was able to pull it all off.
All the vines that were grown around it. I had an old guy tell me. Said you need to get those vines off there because what will happen during a heavy windstorm With vines and stuff on there blocking it, the wind will take the whole thing to the ground.
So he said, basically, you either need to get the vines off of it, or else you're going to be out there with a cutting torch cutting it up. And I just the whole. I just didn't want to lose it. I thought it was just a neat piece of history to have standing here.
So I cut the vines, pulled it off. Took me years to get that done until we got it all taken down. Which I had a cherry picker come in and take it down, and it stayed on the ground for a year while everything got repainted and refinished on it. I think they bought it used. Um nineteen twenty Six is the year on this one.
It's been standing there since I was a kid. I never got to see it run at all until actually I restored it. I must have shot. A pickup truckload of 22 caliber bullets out here and whatever, and for some good reason, I just never shot holes in the windmill. Most windmills you see if they aren't Destroyed from wind damage or whatever, somebody's blowed holes in them, and especially in that crown that's on top of here.
And once you blow holes in that, from the bottom up especially, water gets in the top, gets into the gears and bearings, rusts it solid, and it's pretty well junk. That's the way a lot of these got ruined was bullet holes basically. The other way is you would run them completely out of oil and let them spin. Because what will happen You'll get a big windstorm come up. spin All the bearings in there will get really hot, and all of a sudden it will lock up, and the inertia of that spinning windmill will.
Wide this thing up like a ball, put it on the ground. Once again, the torch comes out, and you're going to end up hauling it away as scrap iron.
So I Always liked it standing here and Didn't shoot at it. And when the weeds grew up, I pulled the weeds off of it, and then eventually I fixed it. Yeah. And great job as always to Jesse. And my goodness, there's an American Windmill Museum in Lubbock, Texas.
And a special thanks if you're ever driving through, stop by. The Windmill Story. An important part of American history here. on our American story.
Okay. Lee Habib here, and I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to hear again can be found there daily. Again, Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps us keep these great American stories coming.
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We're back for season four to talk to some incredible small business owners. The big thing about working at tech is that it's ever-evolving, ever-changing. Everyone's a rookie. That's how fast the industry is changing.
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