Engines of the Wind

(THIS PANEL) A windmill stands motionless before a golden backdrop in the stillness of a foggy winter dawn on Willcox Playa, in southeastern Arizona. (FOLLOWING PANEL, PAGES 24 AND 25) Ranchers seldom build a corral without a windmill nearby to pump water for livestock, such as this one near Madera Canyon, south of Tucson. BOTH BY RANDY PRENTICE

Engines of the Wind A PORTFOLIO

Windmills: the trusty servants of man that once harnessed the power of the wind to draw precious water from deeplying pools buried far beneath the earth. Most of what few remain today are left forlorn and useless to fend for themselves. The old pump rod and cylinder are still; the shiny metal blades no longer spin freely in the breeze.

But it wasn't always so. Windmills were once a key to the development of the West during the latter half of the 19th century. No permanent settlements or firm trade routes across the arid plains were possible until wells were drilled and wind-mills built to draw the cold, sparkling fluid to the surface.

The windmill did not originate on the dry plains of the West. The conversion of wind power to controlled kinetic energy got its start far back in history with mills erected as grinders of grain. But their adaptation for the drawing of water from deep wells gave the machines new significance at a time when development of western lands was almost at a standstill. Without the windmill, large areas of the United States would doubtless have remained unsettled for many decades.

Windmills were first used in large numbers by the new railroads, which needed water for the steam-driven locomotives working their way across the nation's midlands from the industrial centers of the East. In due course, the cattlemen of the western plains began to depend on windmill-supplied watering tanks spaced across their vast range. Then came the homesteaders, the plow-and-cow farmers, who needed to pump water for gardens and livestock.

lands from the industrial centers of the East. In due course, the cattlemen of the western plains began to depend on windmill-supplied watering tanks spaced across their vast range. Then came the homesteaders, the plow-and-cow farmers, who needed to pump water for gardens and livestock.

This was the windmill's golden age. It began to ebb with rural electrification, when power lines gradually crept into nearly every cranny of the country, driving the new-fangled electrical pumps needed to pull water from deeper and deeper wells.

Today, only in random and remote areas of the West can windmills still be seen and admired as they wait silently for the wind, or brusquely go whirling about their business-nostalgic reminders of a colorful time now gone.

Confirmed city dwellers and the very young aside, who among us hasn't at some time found himself in the presence of a venerable old windmill standing a lonely vigil, hauntingly outlined against the glow of a late summer sky? And who at that moment hasn't suddenly felt himself longing to return once more to some dimly remembered, happier yesterday? What power these tireless engines of the wind have as they solemnly clank and clatter in the great empty spaces of our land, conveying us in an instant through time and space to what once was or might have been-home and peace and hope and love....