American Wind Power Center

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The American Wind Power Center is a museum of wind power located in Lubbock, Texas. It is located on 28 acres of city park land in downtown Lubbock. The Center has one of the largest collections of American style windmills in the world, with over 160 on exhibit.

The center was established in 1993 by Miss Billie Wolfe and Mr. Coy F. Harris. Miss Wolfe, a faculty member at Texas Tech University began searching for windmills in the early 1960's. She photographed and documented windmils across the nation and encouraged people to save what windmills were still standing. Thirty years later there had been several individuals who had restored a number of early mills and Miss Wolfe located one of these in Mitchell, Nebraska. By this time, Harris was working with Miss Wolfe and he arranged, disassembled and moved this collection of 48 rare windmills to Lubbock.

These windmills remained in storage until 1997, when the City of Lubbock gave the museum group an interesting area of eastside Lubbock. Harris and volunteers moved the collection to this new site. Windmills were erected on the grounds and inside a modest exhibit building.

In 1999, a much larger building became available and Harris directed the movement of this building to the park site. He redesigned part of the "metal fabrication building" to better fit the windmills.

At the present time, there are over 100 rare and historic water pumping windmills displayed inside. Another 60 windmills are erected on the grounds with many pumping water.

Complementing the water pumping windmills are wind electric machines. Some of these date to the early 1920's. Dominating the windmill grounds is a Vestas V47 wind turbine. This 660KW turbine stands on a 50 meter tower and provides (on a yearly average) all of the power required by the museum facility. Excess energy is sold to the local power grid.

[edit] References

“Cover”, Images of The High Ground of Texas (Journal Communications Inc.) 2006 - 2007 

“Cover”, Texas Highways (Texas Department of Transportation), March 2002 

“Cover”, Texas Farmer-Stockman (FarmProgress), August 1998 

in Coy F. Harris: Windmill Tales, Wyman Meinzer, Texas Tech Press.