The Windmill at MOSTHistory

by Francisco Guajardo, Museum CEO

In early January 2023, the museum contracted windmill repairman Jim Cullums to provide maintenance on the windmill that stands in the Will Looney Legacy Park. Mr. Cullums and his assistant Marcos traveled from their operation base in Poteet, Texas, to work on a windmill thatrepresents an important part of South Texas history.

The Cullums team changed the mechanical portion of the mill, added missing wooden blades that had been destroyed by the natural elements, and gave all the blades a fresh coat of paint. Cullums provided some history and context to the job. He said this version of the windmill was known as the “Cadillac of Windmills” in the early 20th century. It was a design patented about a decade before the Civil War and popularized across the country. Mr. Cullums has been maintaining and restoring windmills since 1980 and takes great pride in doing so. With sustainedupkeep, the museum should have good use of the windmill for many years to come.

Cullums built this windmill almost 20 years ago as the museum was developing Will Looney Legacy Park. In 2004, MOSTHistory trustee Jimmy McAllen proposed the idea of building a windmill and underwrote the effort to build it. McAllen’s vision was to honor an original windmill that had been built in the same location in 1900, a few years before the founding of the town of Chapin. A hurricane destroyed the original windmill in 1910, but it was replaced. For many years, the windmill was part of the local landscape. At some point in the 20th century, the windmill was no longer needed and was removed.

Windmills were essential to the development of communities across South Texas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They made it possible to pump water from beneath the ground, provide water for steam engines, and to attract settlers to semi-arid lands. One was placed just feet to the west of the 1910 Hidalgo County Jail, and while there, the windmill performed its function.