The Largest Private Collection of Windmills

[The windmill collection] once belonged to area collector Bill Dalley. Dalley, who donated dozens of his windmills to the county in 2011, died in November 2018. Many of the donated windmills began to fall into disrepair, and county commissioners decided to auction some so proceeds could help with maintaining those that remained.
–The Eastern New Mexico News, April 2021

You’ll see us—we no longer gather water from the earth. Drive down US-70 and head toward the fairground. Down Spruce. Down Lime. We know—this place is beautiful and grinding. When you got here, did you count the trees? Did they feel precious and few? One tree peeks beyond the fence and the brown grasses stretch and they whip through the wind flinging dirt. The sky is bluer than believed; it expands toward the earth. The dairies smell most at dusk, rancid during the perfect light and as you drive up, consider—dust-dented and oxidized, we could be a kind of tree, lined in messy rows, arms in every direction. We always feel tall, emerging from flatness. But aren’t we guardians at the end of this, idly spinning and we came from elsewhere—ranches 50 miles west, other states and centuries. And we’ll scatter to collectors, to people holding on. But we need you to see the ground we leave grows drier as we watch, break, splinter, rust. This drought is exceptional. The worst designation—prolonged and every year we’re further gone. Go home—get some sleep and pay your bills. We want you to save something.

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