Historical Marker
Pioneer Windmill
Historical marker location:
148 E. First St., Hereford, Texas
( southeast corner of 1st & Main Street)
Marker installed: 1970
A wind-driven machine for pumping water. Its use made gardening easier and led to irrigated farming on arid High Plains. With barbed wire, it enabled settlers and stockmen to penetrate region in 1870s. Town had name "Windmill City" because of some 400 towers once on landscape.
(1970).
The discovery of oil in 1901 near Beaumont, Texas, sparked an oil boom that transformed the state's economy and led to the rise of the modern petroleum industry.