Pioneer Windmill

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight with a little extra West Texas wind behind it. We're talking about the Pioneer Windmill, out in Deaf Smith County, and this is one of those stories where a simple machine changed just about everything. Picture the High Plains.

Arid. Flat. The kind of country that doesn't give up water without a fight.

Now somebody figures out how to put a wheel in the wind and pull that water right up out of the ground. That's the wind-driven machine for pumping water, and once it arrived, the whole calculus of living out here shifted. Gardening got easier.

Then came irrigated farming on land that, before this, didn't seem like it had any business growing much of anything. But here's where the story gets big. Pair that windmill with barbed wire, and suddenly settlers and stockmen could penetrate this region.

That happened in the 1870s. Two technologies, working together, opening up a place that had largely said no to that kind of settlement. And the windmill didn't just change the land, it changed the skyline.

At one point, some 400 towers stood out on that landscape. Four hundred. The town picked up the name Windmill City, and honestly, what else were they going to call it.

Four hundred towers catching the wind, pulling up the water, holding the whole thing together. That's the Pioneer Windmill, and that's Deaf Smith County telling you exactly who it was.

What the marker says

A wind-driven machine for pumping water. Its use made gardening easier and led to irrigated farming on arid High Plains. With barbed wire, it enabled settlers and stockmen to penetrate region in 1870s. Town had name "Windmill City" because of some 400 towers once on landscape. (1970)