Dutch Windmill at Wamego City Park

Location:  City park on East edge of Wamego.

A restored Dutch Windmill commands the high ground in what must be one of the prettiest city parks in the state.  The forty foot high native stone mill was originally constructed in 1879 and stood on the farm of a Dutch immigrant twelve miles north of Wamego.  In 1925, the tower was taken down, then each stone was numbered and hauled to the Wamego park where the old mill was painstakingly reconstructed at its' present location.

A likeness of Ceres, mythical goddess of grain, keeps eternal watch above the structure's doorway.  Once she looked across fields of grain, but today she casts her gaze upon a city park, and in season, the beautiful tulip gardens planted there.  Each year in April, a Tulip Festival is held in the park amid the gently swaying Dutch flowers in the shadow of the rustic old mill.

Now at rest, these blades once turned with the wind and must have been quite a site as they provided the power for milling of grain.  In the days before electricity many sources of power were harnessed to do the work that needed to be done.  Today's electrical generation windmill farms, which seem to be sprouting on hilltops like mushrooms after a Spring rain, are proof that what's old is new again.

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