Leffels Turbine -- Menardville Museum, Menard TX
N 30° 55.454 W 099° 47.044
14R E 425087 N 3421468
This Leffels mill turbine is on display outside of the Menardville Museum in Menard Texas
Waymark Code: WMTV9R
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 01/09/2017
Views: 2
This machine old equipment on display outside at the Menardville Museum in Menard TX. There is no interpretive sign.
When we first looked at it, since it was next to a 19th century horse-drawn plow and seeder, we thought this might be some kind of a threshing machine. However, it turns out to be a water-powered mill turbine which most likely would have been used with water furnished by the Menard irrigation canal system that still provides water to farms and houses in this community.
From what we could find online, this turbine is a "Leffels Mill Turbine." Turbines such as this one used water power to run grist mills. See the Metamora Mill website in Indiana: (
visit link)
A panel on this turbine reads as follows:
"LEFFELS PATENT
JANUARY, 14, 1862
REISSUED OCT. 11, 1864
SPRINGFIELD, OHIO"
For more information on "The Ditch," as they call it in Menard, see here: (
visit link)
"MENARD: DITCH WALK
In 1874, businessmen in Menard, located along the banks of the San Saba River, had a dilemma – how to provide irrigation to 2000 acres of nearby fields and power to local gristmills under one united project. William Vaughn, William Tipton, and James H. Comstock set out to accomplish the task by chartering the Vaughn Agricultural and Mechanical Canal Company that year and, by 1876, water from the San Saba was flowing, via gravity, from 5 miles above Menard to 5 miles below, providing irrigation for farmland and water to turn the gristmill wheels. In 1905, the Menard Irrigation Company took over the canal and has continued to provide irrigation water for over one hundred years. Today, visitors to Menard are able to meander along a segment of this historic rock-lined canal, a route known as the “Ditch Walk”, although the pastoral beauty of the flowing water beneath shady branches, the strategically-placed benches, and the decorative water wheel along the route creates a much prettier stroll than the name implies."