American Wind Power Center – Lubbock, TX

I am BACK with roadtrip recaps. Despite ending our little 8-month, cross-country endeavor, I still have many, many gigabytes of pictures and videos to upload and share. So, I’ll just slowly chip away at it!

I left off in Texas, just before reaching Lubbock. There’s quite a lot to do in Lubbock, though many know it simply as a college town. Our first stop was the Praire Dog Town (how can you not love a city that designates an entire park to what others might consider an infestation of rodents?), but because of the rain and wind, the dogs just weren’t out playing and entertaining.

You know what’s perfect in wind? Windmills! 

Yup. There is an entire museum in Lubbock, Texas dedicated to the incredible invention of wind power. We were pretty excited to visit the American Wind Power Center, particularly when our parking spot was right next to a turbine.

Really gives you a sense for the size of them! The center is located on 28 acres, and has almost 200 windmills on display, both indoors and out.

The picture above shows the type of windmills I generally associate with the term – old-fashioned and wooden. These are the type of windmills that flourished across central and western United States during the 1800s and 1900s. They’re actually called a windpump, and are designed to turn slowly, to have greater torque in low winds and be able to self-regulate their speed in high winds.

The American Wind Power Center began in 1993, when a Texas Tech University faculty member began a campaign to photograph and preserve historic windmills across America. Accumulation of windmills began slowly, until the city of Lubbock was able to designate land for the museum. Built in 1999, the current site actually houses several windmills that gather energy and water, and provide all power necessary for running the museum.

The inside of the museum is jam-packed with windmills, both new and old. Now, because I’ve said as much as I have to say on the subject of windmills, here’s a bunch of pictures.

A gorgeous addition to the museum is this 5,500 sq. foot mural depicting the history of the windmill in West Texas. Don’t these windmills look more familiar in today’s world?

I particularly liked the evolution of society depicted in the mural. And these two children in fancy dresses on a horse:

Hello, cow.

If you happen to be in the Lubbock area, check out the museum! We had a great time poking around here.