Pioneer Windmill

The windmills that named the Windmill City gave way to deeper pumping. In 1910 D. L. McDonald sank the first successful irrigation well into the Ogallala Aquifer north of Hereford, and irrigated farming became increasingly common in the 1930s and 1940s; large-scale irrigation followed in the 1950s, bringing vegetables, sugar beets and grain for the county's feedlots. By the 1980s the groundwater was diminishing, and residents, fearing contamination of the aquifer, opposed federal attempts to make Deaf Smith County a nuclear-waste dump site.

What the plaque says

Pioneer Windmill 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)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Deaf Smith County Historical Museum — 0.3 mi
  Hereford's county museum in an early Catholic school: the Windmill City's pioneers, a half-dugout and caboose outside, and work by the Italian prisoners held south of town in the war.
• Buffalo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 18 mi
  A 1938 Depression-era lake on Tierra Blanca Creek that has gone dry, now 7,664 acres of shortgrass, cottonwood canyon and a prairie dog town on the High Plains south of Umbarger.

More markers nearby

• Deaf Smith County — steps away
• Two-Wheel Fire Hose Reel — 0.3 mi
• Town Without a Toothache — 0.5 mi
• Mothers Park — 0.6 mi