Explore American windmill history with Bob Emick, a Colorado rancher who rebuilt the towering Eclipse windmill pictured here in 1880.
It is interesting what triggers a person’s passion to collect and preserve a piece of American history. For 91-year-old Colorado rancher Robert “Bob” Emick, a decades-long pursuit of resurrecting the country’s earliest and often forgotten water-pumping windmills began in 1981 with the discovery of a photograph showing his Aunt Elizabeth Hasser’s homestead at the turn of the 20th century near Lamar, Colorado. The vintage image showed an original Eclipse windmill next to the house. That was the moment that Bob knew he had to have one of these wooden windmills.
Evidence of the former Eclipse was discovered earlier by Bob’s wife, Helen, when the family garden was prepared. When the soil was tilled, iron pieces were churned up. These happened to be the Eclipse wheel clips that remained after the wood from the mill decayed.

The Eclipse windmill was first patented and manufactured by the Leonard Wheeler family in Beloit, Wisconsin, two years after the Civil War. The family sold Eclipse Wind Engine Co. to Fairbanks, Morse & Co., Chicago, in the 1890s. Its solid wooden wheels, made using multiple closely set, thin wooden blades, were manufactured in sizes ranging from 8-1/2 feet to 30 feet in diameter. Hinged wooden tail vanes allowed the mills to be effectively shut off in high winds. Eclipse remained a leading manufacturer of wooden windmills throughout the rest of the 19th century and into the early 20th century.

Building a community
In the early 1980s, American windmill collectors and restorers had yet to form a cohesive group. Bob eventually connected with Ike Osteen, who at the time had a complete Eclipse windmill in his yard in Springfield, Colorado, and who happened to be the brother-in-law of American windmill enthusiast James Nidey and his son, Rick. Bob and Ike quickly became friends in their efforts to preserve American windmills.

In 1982, the Emicks acquired a 10-foot Eclipse from a neighboring ranch that was identical to one that once stood on the Emick homestead. Helen Emick’s father, Robert Clodfelter, along with Emick sons Tim and Kenneth, worked together to painstakingly figure out how to make the exact compound angle cuts required to rebuild the wooden wheel sections. The Eclipse windmill was soon restored to its former glory.
From that single windmill, the Emick family became part of several dozen kindred enthusiasts at the start of the 1980s who were the pioneers of windmill preservation in the U.S. In addition to the Nideys and Emicks, other leading windmill preservationists included Henry Abels, Garnet Brooks, Billy Christopher, Harley Stroven and Criss Ash.
Resources give windmill history hobby a boost
It was also during this time that the history of America’s once vibrant and dynamic windmill manufacturing industry became better known. Historian T. Lindsay Baker of Texas in 1985 published his quintessential book, A Field Guild to American Windmills. Three years earlier, anticipating a need to go beyond what could be included in the book, Baker began publishing the Windmillers’ Gazette, a quarterly newsletter documenting America’s windmill history.
Bob Emick was one of the first in line to subscribe to the newsletter and purchased Baker’s Field Guide as soon as it came out in print. These two publications further opened his world, as well as that of others, to the myriad wooden windmills once available to the nation’s farmers and ranchers and that now required saving.

These resources helped enthusiasts discover wooden windmills manufactured by Althouse-Wheeler Co., American Well Works, F.W. Axtell Mfg. Co., Baker Mfg. Co., Challenge Co., A.J. Corcoran, Dempster Mill Mfg. Co., Elgin Windmill Co., Fairbury Windmill Co., Flint & Walling Mfg. Co., Kalamazoo Tank & Silo Co., R.G. Marcy Mfg. Co., Marseilles Mfg. Co., Perkins Wind Mill Co., Phelps & Bigelow Wind Mill Co., James Rork & Brother, Sandwich Enterprise Co., Smith & Pomeroy Wind Mill Co., Stover Mfg. & Engine Co., Union Steel Products Co., and U.S. Wind Engine & Pump Co. Most of these firms shifted away from wind wheels constructed of wood to all-steel designs by the 1890s.
Scores of smaller manufacturers throughout the country during the 1880s and 1890s – the heyday of the American windmill industry – also added windmills to their product offerings, although these mills were often short-lived in a highly competitive market. Most are nearly non-existent today.
Facing restoration challenges
Steel windmills, which first appeared on farms and ranches in the early 1880s and eventually prevailed over wooden windmills, did not appeal to Bob as much as the harder-to-find wooden windmills. The hunt for hardware and remaining components of wooden windmills became an obsession for the Colorado cattle rancher.
The ability to identify bits of metal hardware, which is often all that remains from a long-decayed wooden windmill, requires careful study of windmill manufacturers’ trade literature and patent drawings. Such research might take years before an accurate windmill restoration can commence. In addition to the woodwork, missing metal fasteners for wheels, as well as the gears and shafts for pumping mechanisms, frequently require remanufacturing if original parts are unattainable.
Just as it is for serious farm implement collectors, the rarer the machine, the more difficult it is to restore. The process of rebuilding antique farm machinery calls for patience and determination to complete the project with satisfaction. American windmill collectors are no different in their pursuit of accurate restorations.
Trade fairs bring windmill history enthusiasts and collectors together
By the mid-1980s, it became apparent to the pioneering American windmill collectors that an in-person gathering was necessary for the purpose of exchanging information, as well as buying, trading and selling windmill parts. Through the effort and persistence of Portales, New Mexico, windmill collector Bill Dalley and his wife Alta, the annual International Windmillers’ Trade Fair was born.
In a 2019 Windmillers’ Gazette article on the history of the trade fairs, T. Lindsay Baker described the process of information-sharing and acquisition of parts among windmill collectors prior to 1990: “Whenever enthusiasts learned about other collectors,” he said, “their only ways to communicate with them were through typed or handwritten letters, travel to visit face-to-face, and expensive long-distance telephone calls over hard-wired systems.”

The Emicks were among the 50 participants at the first International Windmillers’ Trade Fair held at the Portales fairgrounds on June 22-25, 1989. For the next two years, the event took place in Portales, before it was decided that the subsequent events should be held in locations throughout the U.S.
With assistance from their children and the Nideys, the Emicks volunteered to host the fourth International Windmillers’ Trade Fair at the Prowers County Fairgrounds in Lamar, Colorado, in June 1992. One of the most interesting activities during the event was a wooden windmill blade and rim cutting demonstration by B.W. “Lefty” Christopher and his son, Roy, Monahans, Texas. The Emicks and Nideys repeated the event in Lamar in 1993 before it moved to another host location the next year.
Developing lasting friendships
Trade fair regulars speak fondly of efforts by the Emicks and Nideys to provide an enriching and welcoming experience for both seasoned and new windmill enthusiasts. The Emicks not only enabled attendees to view their impressive wooden windmill collection but also offered tours of their ranch. And no one ever left the ranch feeling hungry.
In the more than 30-year history of International Windmillers’ Trade Fairs in the U.S., the Emicks and their eight children have hosted increasingly larger events at Lamar in 1997, 2007, 2011 and 2022. For Bob, hosting trade fairs has been both an honor and a delightful experience. He also sees the event as a way to foster and facilitate interest in American windmill history.
“Windmillers develop friendships that last decades, and these relationships are critical to the continued preservation of the American windmill,” he says. “Individual collectors support each other and share any leads and experience they can.”
A permanent home for Eclipse windmill and other historic mills
Since the 1990s, the Emicks have assembled one of the largest privately held collections of rare American wooden windmills. Their restorations have been displayed on the ranch, in Lamar and at other sites across the country.

In 1990, Bob acquired an 1884 Nichols Murphy Power Mill at an Ohio auction after seeing a sale bill sent by Garnett Brooks. Power mills, unlike their water-pumping counterparts, used a system of rotary shafts and bevel gears to perform mechanical work, such as grinding grain and sawing wood. The Henry Ford Museum inquired about purchasing the Nichols Murphy Power Mill from the Emicks before they got it home to Colorado.
Billie Wolfe and Coy Harris, founders of the American Wind Power Center (now American Windmill Museum) in Lubbock, Texas, approached the Emicks in the mid-1990s, proposing purchase of approximately 40 mills (including the Nichols Murphy) for the burgeoning museum collection. An agreement was reached and transfer of the mills was completed by 1999. The Emicks used the proceeds to expand the ranch, and visitors from around the world continue to enjoy the mills at the museum in Lubbock.
Unofficial windmill history ambassadors
At about the same time, Bob and Francine Popeck of Batavia, Illinois, attended a windmillers’ trade fair in Lamar. There they saw the U.S. Wind Engine & Pump Co. Model E mill at the railroad display in downtown Lamar. The Popecks were instrumental in finding historic windmills manufactured by the half-dozen windmill manufacturers once based in Batavia and erecting them in the city near the former factory buildings. The display, which includes windmills from the Emick collection, is part of the legacy of Bob Popeck, who died in 2016. Dozens more Emick windmills are installed in private collections across the U.S.
In 2000, Bob erected nine windmills along the road leading into the family ranch. Due to the frequency of damaging high winds on the open prairie east of the Rocky Mountains, he was forced to move the windmills into a large steel building on the ranch. Today it holds about 50 historically significant wooden windmills. Another five stand outdoors, dotting the ranch property.

An Enterprise mill, resplendent with blue blade tips and three governor weights, is among Bob’s favorites. Other favorites include a rare Lady Elgin, a 12-foot automatic open-wheel Perkins (one of just three known in existence) and a Tucker Automatic with individual feathering blades, the only surviving example. Bob also enjoys finding and restoring the large railroad pattern windmills that pumped water for thirsty steam locomotives that once crisscrossed the U.S.
The Emicks enjoy sharing their collection of historic mills with groups and host many individual windmillers who visit by invitation. They also have three restored wooden windmills on display in downtown Lamar, including a modest-size Dutch windmill whose parts were picked up during World War II by a local resident.
Bringing the past to life
Bob has physically slowed down in recent years, but his passion for American wooden windmill preservation remains vibrant. Along with Helen, and with assistance from the couple’s children and grandchildren, he remains active in windmill restoration.
When T. Lindsay Baker’s book, American Windmills: An Album of Historic Photographs, was published in 2006, Bob fell in love with the book’s cover illustration, a ca. 1880 photograph showing two women in formal attire on an observation tower overlooking the city of San Diego. The tower was topped by a 14-foot Flint & Walling Original Star windmill.
In the 1990s the Emicks acquired a 14-foot Original Star from the Nideys. After completing restoration of the windmill, the Emicks displayed it in the courtyard/dining area of the Cow Palace Hotel in Lamar for several years. Later, Bob decided to recreate the windmill tower shown in the vintage photograph with his Original Star mill on his ranch. Son Don, with the experience of years in the construction industry, replicated the wooden tower and staircase shown in the ca. 1880s photo.

“Operation of the [Original Star] mill is straightforward,” explained T. Lindsay Baker, speaking to a group of spectators viewing the Emick windmill under the Colorado sun during the June 2022 International Windmillers’ Trade Fair in Lamar. “The rotary movement of the turning wheel is transmitted by a steel main shaft passing through babbited bearings to a crank plate keyed to its opposite end. A maple pitman connects a steel wrist pin on the back side of the crank plate to the upper end of a steel pump rod that moves up and down in babbitted guides at the top of the main ironwork. The pump rod passes downward through the pivot pipe of the main casting to a swivel within the tower top, where it fastens to the wood pump rod.”
Today, the Emick family tradition continues. Son Michael Emick is restoring a rare Powell & Douglas Mfg. “Iron Screw” mill dating to the 1880s. Other historic mills have come and gone from the family collection to be shared far and wide, but the Emicks’ first restored Eclipse remains a cherished and familiar sight at its original location on this Colorado homestead. FC
Editor and publisher of the Windmillers’ Gazette, Christopher Gillis is researching a book with Mike Werst of Wincharger.com about American wind generators from 1900 to 1950 for Texas A&M University Press. He can be reached by email at windmillersgazette@gmail.com or call (410) 353-3429.