There are a few things more iconic to a nation’s image than windmills are to Holland.

The Dutch were harnessing wind long before the Proud Mary’s paddles churned down the Mississippi under the power of steam. The Dutch had Big Wheels Turning even before the Industrial Age.

Dr. Google tells us the Dutch started building windmills as early as 1,200 AD. Their purpose – to grind grains and saw timber among other things. Centuries later, Windmills began pumping water to keep homes dry and actually create more dry land on which the Dutch could expand their farms. Today, the Netherlands is the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world after the United States.

In the 19th century, more than 9,000 windmills dotted the Dutch landscape. Only around 1,200 remain in original form. But their modern descendants, tall, sleek and white, can be seen everywhere, still using renewable energy, wind, to the service of Dutch homes and factories.

The most picturesque collection of Windmills is in Kinderdijk, a little town a bit due east of Rotterdam, the huge port and the second largest Dutch city.  Our host and guide, Rinus, took us there, driving through a determined spate of cold rainy weather that had us visitors grumbling a bit, although the locals shrugged it off. But the gods may have heard us. Stepping out of the car to see perhaps Holland’s most famed site, the rain stopped, the dark skies pushed off, and voila! Ideal lighting and backdrop for a much-anticipated photo shoot.

Looking out across the lowlands at the Windmills, it is easy to imagine lonely sentinels to the memory of a bygone age, the parallel persona of the structures’ Spanish nemesis Don Quixote, continuing a futile fight against irrelevance. Yet these 19 windmills, constructed around 1740, are astonishingly well preserved. And so, in 1997, Kinderdijk was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

More Windmills can be seen in the town of Zaanse Schans, a little northwest of Amsterdam. It made this writer think of fictional Disney-inspired Celebration Florida. Zaanse Schans is meant to to represent a Dutch village in the 1700’s. Unlike Disney’s creation, Holland’s mythical town is served up with authentic preserved windmills and wooden houses relocated here from northern Holland.  

A Windmill consists of the sails, or blades on the outside. On the inside, the machinery consists of a big wooden gear attached to a shaft and brake wheel. One other component is the living quarters for the mill master, no more than a cozy one room apartment with a kitchen, heating appliance, and a bed.

Initially, windmills employed the physics familiar to US Steamboats. The gears inside convey power from the rotary motion of the sails to an applied mechanical device. For example, moving water using a paddle. Then, someone got the more effective idea of attaching an Archimedean screw to a windmill and using that to pump water. The result was amazing: water could be pumped higher and faster. The new technology helped the Netherlands grow, literally, reclaiming more and more wetlands for farming.

So, the Netherlands’ history is rich with Windmills, and like the American Cowboy, they are a timeless national icon.

More photos below.