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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 6 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 4-6's 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 flowers 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 wing 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 until 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 everything died on it, I was able to pull it all off. All the vines that were growing around it. I had an old guy tell me, he 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 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 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. 1926 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 blown 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, it'll 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 wad this thing up like a ball, put it on the ground and once again the torch comes out and you're going to end up hauling it away with scrap iron.
So I always liked it standing here and just didn't shoot at it. And when the weeds grew up I pulled the weeds off of it and then eventually I fixed it. 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. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the show where America is the star in the American people and we do it all from the heart of the South, Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't do this show without you. Our shows will always be free to listen to but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to OurAmericanStories.com. Give a little, give a lot.
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Copyright 2025. JPMorgan Chase & Company. Hey, Janice Torres here.
And I'm Austin Hagewitz. We're the hosts of Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories, produced by Ruby Studio and Intuit QuickBooks. Catch up on seasons one and two and join us for a brand new season of the podcast as we talk to small business owners about how they manage and grow their businesses with the help of platforms like Intuit QuickBooks.
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