Welcome to Colorado -- Buffalo Herds & Grasslands -- Windmills on High Plains -- Regional Map - Colorado Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

PANEL 1: BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND

“…One would never expect to find in a ranch house marble basins and porcelain tubs. Such things exist, and are due wholly to the agency of the wind utilized by the windmill.” – E.H. Barbour, 1899

“The famous Platte Valley, with its broad expanse and shallow wells, is a veritable windmill arena. From Omaha west through the state, a distance of 500 miles, and even beyond to Denver, there is a constant succession of these creations of a sturdy population.” – E.H. Barbour, 1899

“The windmill and water was important because water was scarce. The windmill said we have water. Bring your barrel and get some.” – Gladys Van Loon

The windmill stands with the buffalo as the great symbol of the nineteenth-century American West. On the high plains, water is scarce but wind constant. The genius of the western windmill, introduced to the plains during the 1870s, is that if not only harnesses the wind to get at the hidden underground water, but it is small, multi-bladed, light, movable, self-regulating, easy to maintain, and inexpensive. Its users are many: from pumping water for people, animals, and crops to powering tools like feed grinders, wood saws, churns, and corn shellers. No one knows how many windmills operate today—one estimate for the years between 1880 and 1930 is six million—but you can be sure that wherever you chance to be.

PANEL 2: PLAINS COUNTRY

Indians, Plains, and Buffalo
Thirty millions buffalo once thundered over the prairies of the American west, with perhaps eight million of the southern plains. When native peoples acquired the horse from the Spaniards in the seventeenth century, the great buffalo herds suddenly became fair game. Hunting buffalo on their swift ponies, Plains Indians enjoyed immense prosperity, for the objects—all came from this giant animal. Sustaining the buffalo was a sea of grass, predominantly grama, buffalo, and sage here in eastern Colorado. This unique interaction between the land, animals, and people ended in the mid-nineteenth century with the coming of European cultures and technologies.

SEA OF GRASS
Early white immigrants likened these rolling plains to great ocean waves. They described the treeless prairie, where sky and land seemed to merge, as a sea of grass. Wagons, with their white-topped covers, were likened to great-masted ships and called “prairie schooners.” Pioneers on the trail remarked on a sense of isolation, the constant wind, the sameness of the landscape—and how similar all this was to a long sea voyage. And like the oceans, the surrounding vista excited awe. It seemed vast and endless, although the plains country stretched less than six hundred miles between Denver and Kansas City. Still, as they traveled by oxen-drawn wagons, the trip could take fully six weeks, time enough to feel isolated, wind-swept, and lost in a sea of grass.

PANEL 3: WELCOME TO COLORADO

Colorado's vast plains, rugged mountains and grand plateaus, so magnificent in their beauty and variety, seem at times to overshadow the state's history and people. But look closely. The story of Colorado is every bit as dramatic as the physical terrain. Many peoples have helped sculpt Colorado's past: the ancestral Puebloan peoples, whose civilization dates back thousands of years; the Utes, who occupied the Rockies for centuries; the numerous other native peoples who lived in this region; Hispano pioneers, the state's first permanent non-Indian settlers; and the men and women who came here and built cities, dug mines, and planted farms. Colorado's natural endowment is world-renowned. But the state's history, like the land on which it unfolds, features its own breathtaking peaks and valleys, its own scenes of improbable awe and splendor.

PANEL 4: BURLINGTON COUNTRY - Area map

Group or Groups Responsible for Placement: Colorado Historical Society County or City: Kit Carson Date Dedicated: 1997 Check here for Web link(s) for additional information: [Web Link]

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