Where the Wind Blows Free

Gap-toothed and weathered but still straight, the old windmill looks out across the cedar brakes, where trails of horse and wagon cross tracks of 4x4. The old hand is over 60. Cranky and grumbling, he'll work in fits and starts, but get the job done, as long as he's got wind to do it. He likes being alone, out in camp. If he has company once a month, it suits him fine. Like the old-time puncher, he needs his gearbox oiled about Fourth of July and Christmas. Now and then he'll throw a rod or lose a blade in a high wind, but he'll get doctored up with home remedies and keep turning . . and turning . . . and turning . . . as long as there are cattle to water and cowboys to partner with. The American windmill is more than a machine . . . it is a national symbol, evoking different memories in each of us. What the buffalo meant to the In-dian, what the horse meant to the Span-iard that is what the windmill meant to the American settler. Survival . . . development . . . staying power. The historian Walter Prescott Webb observed that the three essentials to the settlement of the Great Plains were barbed wire, the Colt six-shooter, and cheap windmills.

Windmills have been around for al-most 2000 years, but it was left to 19th-century Americans to design a windmill that was cheap, lightweight, and easy to assemble. They were needed by the railroads to supply water for steam locomotives, by townspeople who wanted running water in their new bathrooms, by Midwestern farmers who needed irrigation systems, and by Western stockmen who had to water cattle on the great open ranges of the land.

In 1859 a Connecticut mechanic named Daniel Halladay was asked by a "pump doctor" to build a windmill that would not be torn to pieces in every storm. Halladay replied, "I can invent a self-regulating windmill that will be safe from destruction in violent windstorms, but I don't know of a single man in the world who would want one." Nevertheless, he built a simple tower and a small, lightweight, multibladed wheel with wooden sails that swung back automatically to absorb high winds. Halladay's reluctant invention proved as important to the course of American history as the Dutch tower and post mills had been to European history.

After the Civil War, American "tinkerers" patented nearly a thousand ideas for improving windmills. The first the Halladays, Eclipses, and Jumbos had wooden sails which weathered rapidly and were vulnerable to the prairie fires that were often started by sparks from steam locomotives. In 1883 Thomas O. Perry patented a wheel with metal blades. Aermotor, a new factory in Chicago, Illinois, began mass-producing windmills with galvanized steel blades, and the American windmill industry was off and running. Windmills went west and grew up with the country. Western windmills were used to irrigate vegetable gardens, orchards, and lawns. Milk and butter were cooled in the pump house. Steel storage tanks provided water for the house. Dirt reservoirs were stocked with catfish, ducks and geese, and used to water livestock. In summer, dirt tanks were swimming holes for ranch kids; up north in winter, they served as ice skating rinks. They were often blessed with baptisms on Sundays. More than any other artifact, the windmill gave Westerners the capability of self-reliance.

By the turn of the century, windmills accounted for a large percentage of the American export market. Windmill production was a $10-million-a-year business. From 1880 to 1935, over 6,500,000 windmills were sold in the United States alone. But by 1970, sales were down to about 5000 a year. Several factors combined to cause the downfall. Most obvious was the fact that windmills last a long time and most of the people who needed them already had them. Railroads had switched to diesel engines and no longer needed water for steam locomotives. With the formation of the Rural Electrification Administration in 1936, those farmers and ranchers who could, switched to electric pumps, as

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There were three essentials to the settlement of the dry cattle ranges of the Southwest: barbed wire, sixshooters, and windmills. Among a host of other functions, windmills provide life-giving water to thirsty stock animals. Background photo by Peter Bloomer

Windmills from page 2

they were cheaper and easier to main-tain. Only in the Far West did the wind-mill remain indispensable. In the ranching country of Arizona, it still is. The crimp of Central Arizona's White Mountains and Mogollon Rim straightens into broad folds of piñon and juniper. These rough foothills give way to a gradually declining plateau which stretches north to the blue mesas of the Navajo Reservation, a hundred miles distant. This upland, this drainage of the Little Colorado River, is the short grass prairie... big ranch country . . . windmill country.

Some of the patented land has been divided into acreages and subdivisions, but the great blocks of state and federal land remain whole. Ranches are mea-sured in sections, some in hundreds of sections. Two-million acres of this rangeland, from the Mogollon Rim to the Navajo Reservation, were once grazed by cattle wearing the Hashknife brand. In the 1880s, the Hashknife out-fit ran cattle all the way from the New Mexico border to Flagstaff. The old Hashknife range is one of the few places I know of where windmills still outnumber humans.

A rancher can drive all day over jeep trails without crossing his own tracks or seeing another soul. Antelope race the wind. Deer browse on buckbrush. Red-tailed hawks and eagles lift into the sun. In summer, dust devils swirl and rise above the sandy washes. The land breathes freedom . . . and sighs with loneliness. It seems to remember its violent past. Most of the old line camps and some of the ranches are de-serted. But the windmills are there, still turning, still pumping.

On the open range, windmills are guideposts, landmarks, familiar as neighbors. A windmill tower has pointed the way home to many a lost cowboy. (And if a cowboy says he's never been lost, he means not plumb lost.) The windmill is what a cowboy sees first, coming in from a drive, dust-crusted, leg weary, sore-armed from throwing loops . . . throat too dry to Swallow, hunger cramping his belly. The man pointing the herd feels a sud-den lift of his pony's feet, a kink of ear and tail, a stretch of neck, as his thirsty horse smells water, then sees the rise of a windmill in the distance. Home. Water. The cattle scent the moistness on the breeze and quicken their pace. No need to drive them now. Strung out along the trail, they move by instinct, heads down, a low bawling in their throats. The numb weariness leaves the cowboy's neck and shoulders, his bones slacken to rest in saddle and stirrup, the strain eases from his eyes. He can let himself think about a drink of cool water and a hot meal while the cattle mother-up in the corrals. For the ranch woman the windmill is a lookout tower. If she feels uneasy, she can climb the tower and look off until she sees a tide of red dust where the trails come together and feel a surge of relief. She knows her cowboy is safe, and it is time to put the biscuits in the oven. The purr of the windmill was her only company all day. She knows the pitch and tone of her own windmill any-where, like the voice of a beloved friend, and will remember it until the day she dies.

There are certain physical laws governing windmill behavior known to every rancher. One is that when the tanks go dry and there is no rain in sight, the windmills quit pumping. The rods get uncoupled, or the leathers wear out, or worse, the rods have to be re-placed. That means a trip to town for parts, a day or two spent pulling the sucker rods, and living in fear that a rod will slip down into the well and have to be fished out by a high-priced well driller. Another natural law regard-ing windmill behavior is that when a man has climbed all the way to the top of a 60-foot tower in a high wind, he invariably leaves the tools he needs on the ground. Not the least danger in a cowboy's life is being blown off a wind-mill tower. To use an old family expression, working on windmills may be “the hatin'est thing he likes to do.” Windmills speak to those who listen. Spring is seldom silent. The blades thrash and churn and clatter as the southwest wind batters the winter-worn plains. Spring storms violate the land. Swift gray fronts attack the sleeping earth with restless fury. Snow showers and sleety rains pummel the brittle yellow grass. Sandstorms choke the air and ravage the topsoil. The old wind-mill turns its cheek to the anger of the storm and stands firm.

Windmills work hardest during the dry months of May and June. The tanks shrink to beds of caked mud. Cattle, lean from winter, smell the edges of the tank and bawl to one another. Finally, in small groups, they plod away from their chosen haunts to the closest windmill. Throughout the summer drought, the windmills pump day and night. If the wind slackens, the gaso-line engine which drives the pumpjack goes to work. The rancher ties off the windmill and connects the rods to the pumpjack. A long and arduous cycle begins. Every day the rancher makes the rounds of the windmills to keep the gasoline engines running. Ranchers in Arizona claim they have to learn the “right cussword” to start every tem-peramental engine.For miles around the windmills, the grass is cropped short. In a drought, ranchers have to put out feed supple-ments, too. Until it rains, he keeps haul-ing feed for cattle and gasoline and oil for the engines. He checks his drinking tubs and float boxes, which govern the supply of water to the tubs. Livestock can survive a drought on browse and supplemental feed, but they cannot live without water. As the old cowboy says, his life is “just one continual round of pleasure.” Sometime in July, dove-gray clouds begin to light on the backs of the mountains. First a few, then a cluster, then a flock, until the sky is flanked by a mass of thunderheads. Slowly the old windmill trembles with relief, then turns its head to the San Francisco Peaks and the smell of rain. Cattle bed down calmly in the open, their backs to the approaching storm. At first a light patter, then a shiver of cool rain, then a hard shower, and the drought is over. The gasoline engines can be shut down. The windmill is coupled up once more. Cattle drift off to water in the rocks and canyons, where the grass is tall.

In fall the wind blows fresh and clean. September and October in northern Arizona are roundup time. For a month or more, depending on the size of the ranch, all hands are on horseback, gathering cattle. In the pale of dawn the cowboy feels the first pinch of winter. The horses are "fresh." They pitch and snort a little and wring their tails to let their riders know they had better stay awake. Cowboys ride out abreast along the trail until the sign is given to hold up. The boss tells each man what his drive will be that day. The man with the stoutest horse will usually take the "outside circle," which may be anywhere from 10 to 50 miles. They will meet at midday at one of the windmills.

The ranch woman cooks dinner, packs it into a pickup truck, and heads out to some remote windmill tower where she hopes to see a sign of life before the dinner gets cold. Under the shade of a cedar, she builds a small cook fire, fills the coffeepot with water from the well, and makes camp coffee. Some cowboy is sure to say that if it's "side-boiled" he can't drink it. By noon, small trails of dust appear from different directions. While the cattle water out, the cowboys take turns eating. They will meet at the same well for two or three days, then move on until all the pastures are "clean." The rancher's goal is to give the cattle as much time as possible to gain weight and still beat the first storm of winter.

One day in November or December, the old windmill strains its neck stiffly to the north and groans stoically. A blizzard hits hard and fast. Snow saddles the mountains. Heads of sage and sacaton and rabbit brush bristle above a quilt of white. The temperature drops. Cattle hump up and seek shelter in the cedars. Once again the rancher makes the rounds of his windmills, putting out feed, salt and minerals, and chopping ice on the tanks and drinking tubs so his cattle can water. The double-bladed wind cuts through coats and jeans. Bare fingers stick to steel. The windmill has a dull metallic twang. The axe breaks winter silence and echoes through the hills, decisive as the crack of a rifle. In early spring the tumbleweeds green beneath the trees. Badgers roll sleepily in their dens. The sun wakes sleeping life. The wind plays hide-andseek. The head of the old windmill stirs, turns right, then left; its blades flutter...stop... race. The old cows, gaunt from winter, come in to water, and with a proud toss of their heads, show off their romping calves. There is no end and no beginning on a ranch. Just a turning, steady turning, like the blades of a windmill.

Before the era of the corporate ranch, ranchers were laborers, not businessmen. They had calluses on their hands and other places. They saved their money for hard times. Neighbors helped each other with branding and roundup. Families ate and worked together. Kids learned more from their folks than they did from teachers or schools. Money was scarce, but there were beef and beans to eat. It was a harsh but satisfying life that bred strong, independent people. Something resembling that life is returning. More young people are making a conscious decision to stay on the land. As utility and gasoline costs go up, country people are looking to the past for solutions to the future. Windmills and wind generators are back in style.

Jackie and Marvin Sivertsen of Taylor, Arizona, are restoring old windmills in a thriving new business. About six years ago, a man from Woodruff, a small farming community, asked MarEven if he could bring back a used windmill from the Midwest, where Marvin went to buy antiques for his business, House of Memories. Since then, the Sivertsens have hauled over 200 windmills from Minnesota and Wisconsin to sell to local ranchers and farmers. They have looked at so many windmills, they can identify brands by the shape of the blades and tail. They replace missing blades, fix damaged parts, and rebuild the gear boxes. The cost of a good rebuilt windmill is about one-third the cost of a new one, and the Sivertsens claim the old materials are better.Last year the post office honored the windmill by putting its image on a stamp. Like its partner, the cowboy, the windmill is a proud American symbol. If the old windmill could spin tales, he would tell of blood feuds and range wars fought to the death, of hard men and brave horses, of struggling homesteaders and hungry children, of the loneliness and isolation that drove some women mad and toughened others. He would speak of staggy old Longhorn steers and big-boned Durham bulls, of purebred Angus and Herefords, of crossbreds and Brahmas and corrientes that it watered out. It would remember the names of those who lie in unmarked graves. But the windmill tells no tales.

It just keeps turning, in the big open country . . . where the wind blows free.