NEBRASKA CITY – Its metal has been re-galvanized and the bearings in the gear mechanism replaced,  but the ELI windmill dedicated Thursday with a ribbon cutting at Arbor Day Farm is essentially as it was when first produced over 100 years ago.

The Kregel family started production in Nebraska City in 1879 and operated there until 1991, after 112 years. Isaiah Yott describes the  Kregel Windmill Factory Museum as the last, intact windmill factory in America.

Yott: “When you go to the museum, the one thing everybody seems to agree upon is it’s like a time capsule in there. It’s like  you’re walking backwards in time 100 years inside a building.”

Windmill enthusiast Dave Silcox said Kregels’ 1918 windmills were built to be weather resistant.

 

Silcox: “Earlier models to this had wood components that wouldn’t withstand the wind. The sun would get to it after awhile. Hail would get to it and it would require a lot of maintenance.”

The windmill was originally on a farm south of Union, where Charlie McVay’s parents moved when he was six years old. He remembers it as a vital component for household water.

McVay: “If you wanted water pressure, the windmill had to be running. So we used it. We used it for the first 10 years we were living there.”

The windmill has been re-galvanized to give it another 100 years before it looks as aged as it was on the McVay farm.

 Yott said every 20 to 25 years, the Kregels would modify their windmills and said the 1918 model was the second generation.

Yott: “There’s over 1 million pieces inside the Kregel Windmill Factory that represents original inventory left by the Kregels upon their last day of business and production in 1991, so it’s really a little bit of every single year they were in business clear back into 1879.”

 

Windmill enthusiast Dan Clinkenbeard credited Kregel for the longevity of the Eli Windmill, but also stressed that they lasted as long as they did because someone climbed the tower once a week to oil the mechanism.