Black and White windmill shots

[Kansas Rust Buzzard]

I don't really understand how that works, all the pics were the same size and all done just alike? I am from the manual typewriter days days, this is all just voodoo to me.

[Ron Stauffer]

The 1894 Kinney County Fair pic is telling. Only 6 years after Aermotor was built and all but one is steel in the pic. The acceptance and marketing of steel took hold quickly.

Ron Stauffer
Montrose CO

[Kansas Rust Buzzard]

It is F as in Finney as in Garden City. I don't have them in front of me but there was a lot more windmills than shown in that pic, I think I have 5 different photos? About every major brand had a booth there, its along the Arkansas river and water was very shallow, it had good soil for produce and fruit farming so the monster metal mills were used on those farms. Once you got away from the truck farming along the river, the metal mills pretty much vanished in these parts. My grandparents moved into this area after WW1 and my grandma always said "every farm had a wooden windmill" Lots of Mennonites here and when the metal ones did come in they chose Fairburys because they had family up there. I rarely find 602 Aermotors around here because they just were not that common in Fairbury's heyday. The mainstay of SW Kansas was always the Pipe Raymond, thousands upon thousands of them. Most got junked in WW2 but 10-20 years ago almost every farm sale you went to had a governor weight off one they had kept for a backer for putting sickle rivets. I could have bought pallets of them back then. Wish I would have.

[Wayne]

Keep them coming1 I love the ones with the people. I wonder if they all lived in that one house. The one house looks like it has a basement.

[windybob]

I'm stymied as to why there were so many Raymonds not far from here, ( your area) but yet not here at all. We are considered NW Oklahoma here, although there is more west than north to go to hit a border.

Maybe Monitor, Aermotor and Dempster salesmen all had a plan to block every road at the border to any other sales agents. lol

[Kansas Rust Buzzard]

I can't explain that, your not that far from Fairview, I would have brought you one back when I used to run to Grotchie steel all the time. I know one of my classmate's great great whatever was one of the old time well drillers that did a several county area in the 1890s-1910s, his name shows up in a lot of Althouse Wheeler literature. I suspect being the main driller in the area, he sold more mills than anyone else? I think he had at least 3 cable tool rigs going at that time. We had hardware stores and other concerns that sold mills also but they would have been more of a second mill. I need to find it and scan it but I have a picture of my home town about WW1, I think there was a hand full of Elgins, a Monitor, some unidentified s and about 20 Pipe Raymonds int he picture.

[Wayne]

It's kinda like my area I've found more reamains of Dandy's than anything else. Had a Ag and farm implement business in our town and in the 1890's they sold windmills. The Dandy was produced in that time frame wish I could find something to say what kind of windmill they sold.

[JBarker]

cool pic

[Kansas Rust Buzzard]

Wow, Cool! That first photo appears to be an Aeromtor powermill on what is either a log cabin or a corn crib? I can't tell what that second one is, anyone got an idea? Its a fine looking structure with a well outside powered from the line shaft. Maybe we need a thread for powermills? They are my favorite windmill subject and I am sure some others here? Thanks for posting JBarker!

[windybob]

Wayne, hows about me putting an order in for a 6 or 8 ft Dandy Irrigator? You said you have more remains of Dandys than anything else. lol