Top 10 Windmills in the United States
American windmill history runs in two largely separate tracks. The first is colonial and post-colonial grain milling, concentrated in New England and the Mid-Atlantic, where European settlers brought their milling traditions to the new continent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The second is the iron windpump tradition that opened the Great Plains to settlement from the 1870s onward — functional machines rather than heritage monuments, which are now preserved primarily at agricultural museums. This list focuses on the grain mills and a handful of notable exceptions; the map covers both traditions.
1. Eastham Windmill, Cape Cod, Massachusetts (c.1793)
The Eastham Windmill on Cape Cod is the oldest surviving windmill on the Cape and one of the oldest in New England. It is a smock mill, built around 1793, and was moved to its present location in 1793 from its original site. It was restored in the 1930s and again in the 1980s and is now maintained by the Town of Eastham as a heritage monument open in summer. Cape Cod had a significant milling economy based on grain production and the cod-drying industry; several other colonial mill sites survive on the Cape, though the Eastham mill is the best-preserved.
2. Hook Mill, East Hampton, Long Island, New York (1806)
The Hook Mill at East Hampton on Long Island is a working smock mill built in 1806. It was used for grain milling until the late nineteenth century and has been restored to working order by the East Hampton Historical Society. It grinds on demonstration days and is open to visitors in summer. Long Island had a significant colonial milling tradition; Hook Mill is the finest and most complete surviving example. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
3. Robertson Windmill, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia (reconstruction)
The Robertson Mill at Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, is a reconstruction of a colonial-era post mill, built in the 1990s as part of the Williamsburg living-history complex. It grinds grain on demonstration days and represents the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Virginia milling tradition. While a reconstruction, it uses authentic construction methods and materials and is one of the most fully operational examples of the colonial post mill form in the country.
4. Old Mill, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee (1830)
The Old Mill at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is a water-and-wind-powered grain mill dating to 1830, on the Little Pigeon River in the Smoky Mountains foothills. It grinds grain continuously and sells stone-ground cornmeal and flour as its primary commercial product. It is one of the few fully commercial stone-ground mills still operating in the American South and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The mill operates year-round and is one of the more accessible working-mill experiences in the eastern United States.
5. Murphy Windmill, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California (1905)
The Murphy Windmill at the western end of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is a Dutch-style tower mill, 23 metres tall, built in 1905 as a gift from Samuel Murphy to power the park's irrigation system. The windmill was used to pump groundwater to irrigate the park until 1913, when electric pumps took over. It fell into disrepair in the mid-twentieth century and was extensively restored by the San Francisco city authorities in 2012. The wooden sails and cap mechanism are now complete; the mill does not currently grind but is fully structural and a San Francisco landmark. A companion Dutch windmill — the North Windmill (1902) — stands nearby and has been separately restored.
6. Beebe Windmill, Bridgehampton, Long Island, New York (1820)
The Beebe Windmill at Bridgehampton, Long Island, is a smock mill built in 1820 and one of the best-preserved examples of the Long Island milling tradition. It is maintained by the Southampton Historical Museum. The Bridgehampton area of eastern Long Island had a colonial grain-growing economy and several mills; the Beebe is the most complete survivor. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
7. Old Mill, Westville Historic Handicrafts Village, Georgia
The Old Mill at Westville, a living-history village in Georgia, preserves a working grain mill in the context of an early nineteenth-century Georgia agricultural community. The mill grinds on demonstration days as part of the village's programme. Living-history villages of the Westville type — preserving working craft and agricultural technology rather than just buildings — are one of the primary models for accessible windmill and watermill heritage in the American South.
8. Solvang Windmills, Santa Barbara County, California
The Danish-American town of Solvang in the Santa Ynez Valley north of Santa Barbara has four decorative windmills built in the Danish architectural style as part of the town's cultural identity as a Danish heritage settlement. The most prominent, a replica Dutch smock mill in the town centre, is not a working mill but is a recognised California cultural landmark. Solvang was founded in 1911 by Danish immigrants and its mill replicas are heritage symbols of the founding community's cultural origin rather than working industrial machines.
9. Anacortes Windmill, Anacortes, Washington State (1891)
The Anacortes windmill is a tower mill dating to 1891 in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. It is one of the very few historic windmills in the Pacific Northwest and represents the brief wind-milling experiment on the exposed San Juan Islands coastal fringe. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
10. American Wind Power Center, Lubbock, Texas
The American Wind Power Center in Lubbock, Texas, is not a single windmill but a museum with the world's largest collection of historic windpumps — over 200 examples of the iron fan windpump that opened the Great Plains to cattle grazing and dry farming. While windpumps differ architecturally from grain mills, the Centre is the most important institution for American wind-powered heritage and is essential context for understanding what wind power meant in the continental interior. It holds examples of every major American windpump manufacturer from the 1870s to the 1950s.
American windmill context
The survival of colonial-era grain mills in America is precarious: most were demolished or burned by the early twentieth century as roller mills displaced them commercially. The New England and Long Island examples that survive are largely the result of early-twentieth-century historical society preservation efforts. Use the map to find individual sites, and note that the majority of American historic wind-powered structures are windpumps rather than grain mills — a reversal of the European pattern.