OMAHA WORLD HERALD: MIDLANDS
Published Sunday |
September 17, 2000 |
Nebraska Byways: Windmills Whirl at Comstock Ranch
BY TOM ALLAN |
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WORLD HERALD CORRESPONDENT |
Comstock, Neb. - Visitors get much, much more than bed and breakfast at the Dempster House B&B, nestled amid 40 acres of the rolling hills overlooking the Middle Loup River valley four miles northeast of this Custer County village. Besides bedding down in one of the four bedrooms of a 104-year-old homesteader's mansion or camping in one of three tepees in a field, guests can have luncheons and dinners at the Homestead Restaurant and browse and shop in the Crosswind Mercantile. And they can sit in rocking chairs and swings on the old house's wraparound porch and gaze at the whirling beauty of 37 towering windmills. (The multicolored windmills also provide a breathtaking sight on Highway Spur 21 C to Ord off U.S. Highway 183 east of Broken Bow.) The windmills on the 2nd Wind Ranch represent Nebraska's largest collection of standing windmills - and more are yet to come. "It is only the beginning for what we boast will be the largest standing windmill collection in the world," said Henry Nuxoll of Comstock, the operator and co-owner with Roland Shafer of Ord. "We have parts of 128 other windmills being restored in the ranch shops and hope to have a total 125 standing in time for a Windmill World Trade Fair next summer on the ranch." Nuxoll said the trade fair will be a gathering for association members from the United States and Canada who have "a genuine love and respect for windmills and their preservation." The Comstock native and farm equipment salesman confesses he has had a love affair with windmills since boyhood. He says his partner, Shafer, a welding helmet manufacturer, is helping him make a dream come true. "I lost the 160-acre family ranch during the ag crisis 15 years ago but had a chance to buy it back two years ago. That's when we launched the B&B and windmill collection," he said. "It is providing me with a second chance, so I named it the 2nd Wind Ranch. "I started collecting windmills as a hobby. Then it became an investment, then an addiction and now a business." The Dempster House B&B (named for famed windmills built at Beatrice), the restaurant, the mercantile and the windmill restoration employ 12, a number Nuxoll hopes to raise to 20 by next year. Nuxoll got poetic in extolling the beauty of wood-bladed windmills and the giant 20-foot-diameter Aermoter steel mill in his collection. He wrote a "Why Windmills" poem on the large sign beneath the whirling blades. It reads in part: "Windmills are like people. They reach toward heaven like God's steeple. "Drawing their power from sources unseen, just as our lives here in between. "Some are big, some are small. Some are short. Some are tall. Some are pretty. Some are not ... "Man can restore windmills, giving them second chances just as God can restore man and all our branches. "Lord, thank you for my failures and my second chances for they lead to these roads of better glances." Nuxoll is preparing another sign to be hung by the white-picket fence gate in front of the B&B. It will read: "Welcome! This gate is always open. This house is not perfect, nor is anyone who enters it. But the One who watches over it is." The B&B is open the year-round. The restaurant and mercantile are open Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. And the windmills whirl constantly against the sky. For more information, call Nuxoll at (308) 628-4369 or the bed and breakfast at (308) 628-4380. |
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