Nebraska City windmill restoration project aims to bring century-old structures back to life

NEBRASKA CITY, Neb. (KOLN) - Local crews and members of the Kregel Windmill Factory Museum recently gathered to lower a handful of windmills for restoration.

The windmills stood for decades but now need repair.

“We’re getting ready to lower down an Eli windmill that was actually made at the Kregel Museum in Nebraska City well over 100 years ago,” Kregel Windmill Factory Museum Executive Director Issiaih Yott said. “It used to be an active windmill factory.” On this day, the group also lowered a second Eli windmill justs down the hill from the first one.

The Kregel Windmill Factory no longer builds windmills and operates as a museum. For this project, experts with the museum went “into the field” to save pieces of history.

Restoration projects are not a regular occurrence for the museum.

“But, being the director of the last original operational windmill factory in the country, it puts us in a unique spot to help people with windmill-related projects,” Yott said.

A landowner reached out for help with the restoration of five windmills.

“When he reached out to me, of course, I wanted to help because three of the windmills were made at the Kregel factory well over 100 years ago. So, kind of a local history meets local restoration,” Yott said.

The windmills will be restored and brought back to southeast Nebraska.

“We will take them apart, kind of like Legos. And then we will trailer these pieces, where they will go to another windmill restoration expert that my museum, the Kregel Museum, works with. And this particular gentleman has been in windmill restoration for well over 30 years. He’s one of the best in the country,” Yott said.

Once the restoration process is finished, the windmills will be used again in new ways.

“We get a lot of people that approach us for help, for counsel, for knowledge,” Yott said. “It could be, I have a windmill. It could be, I want a windmill. It could be, I know somebody that has a windmill and they are unsure on where to start with it.”

Museum leaders said there is always the possibility of getting help with a community project like this one. “This is literally us in the field saving steel that was made at our place a hundred years ago,” Yott said.

The restoration of the old Eli windmills is a reminder they once served a purpose and still do.

“The main thing that’s important for people to understand is windmills are not dead or dying,” Yott said. “They’re sort of a older technology, but they’re being repurposed for all kinds of different things nowadays. So the idea here is we get to save a piece of very legendary history. It’s one of a couple thousand ever made, but then on the other side, we actually get to put these things back into the countryside where they pump water and they actually serve people once again.”

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