ICONS OF THE OLD WEST

ODE TO WINDMILLS

In the windmills of my mind, I want one…a windmill. Those big metal ones you see in ranching country are not just historical, but sculptural. They’re vestiges of a dwindled way of life; reminders that water access in the desert is a perennial issue.

While antique in appearance, windmills are still the cheapest way to pump water and fill troffs. Windmills are part of our cultural history like stamp mills and saloons. Once, six million dotted this country and were pivotal to the settling of the arid west. Today, they’re still necessary for livestock and wildlife in many locales.

The legacy and beauty of windmills became startlingly clear when I lived on a historic Nevada ranch up a dusty road from five of them. Even though my 800-foot-deep well was electric-pumped, I was mindful of the fact that bigger blades, or sails as they are called, made possible deep wells like mine; that windmills once pumped the water, for folks and cows alike, at the Walking Box Ranch.

Windmills were a common sight from the 1870s to the 1940s. They helped fill the thirst of water-hogging steam locomotives. Cowboys used to climb them to look for cattle, lanterns were hung on them as beacons or signals; some cowboys went on to work as itinerant windmillers: traveling from ranch to ranch installing and maintaining them.

More than a dozen windmills once turned in the Vegas Valley.

Aermotor became the preeminent brand and their stenciled name still stands out on the vane. They continue to fill spare parts orders for old windmills, and estimate there are a million still standing.

The progeny of these old workhorses are the 25,000 turbines spinning today to generate electricity. Nevada is one of the only western states without a single wind farm, though two are proposed.

The first windmill was invented when canvas sails were brought ashore and attached to a wheel. When wood replaced canvas, the windmill became the most powerful machine across a great swath of the globe. Among many uses, it milled grain—hence the name windmill. They were harnessed for one-thousand years before the Dutch brought windmills to our shores. Here the windmill was redesigned with galvanized metal.

The literal link between sailboats and windmills supports the lyrical link between the vast open desert corrugated with mountains and the vast open sea corrugated with waves.

The literary character Don Quixote mistook wooden windmills for giants and attacked with a lance—called tilt-ting—hence the famous line, “tilting at windmills.” Today, they remain part of our metaphorical language with windmill themes in dozens of popular song lyrics.

I’m not the only windmill fool—my nostalgia is shared by the legions who left rural life for city jobs. Near Las Vegas, The Mojave National Preserve contains a mother-lode of windmills, many of which will be preserved as part of the historic landscape.

Heading on vacation to Mt. Rushmore, I saw my chance to own a much smaller icon. Okay…my windmill is only six feet tall—a replica that won’t pump water. But, don’t go calling it kitsch—like a gnome or a pink flamingo—it’s my piece of Americana, my whimsy of spinning glory, my totem to the settlers of the arid west.

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ESSAY BY ROSIE DEMPSEY that aired on KNPR Radio