... And It Pumps Water
December 30, 1933
Newspaper clipping
Publisher unknown

Private Collection
Harvard, IL

From the Julsen Collection

"The two giant windmills which stand sentinel at the western and oceanside en trances to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco have a useful side as well as a highly ornamental one. The mill pictured can pump 40,000 gallons of water an hour in a 15-mile breeze, and its brother about 30,000 gallons of water an hour in a 13-mile breeze. This aids in irrigating the park and in keeping up its reservoirs and lakes.

Naturally California would want to have the biggest, and it is said that this mill is indeed the largest in the world. The diameter of the spread of wings is 114 feet and when a lively salt breeze comes in from the nearby ocean those wings exert a tremendous power. The mill was a gift of S. G. Murphy and cost about $20,000.

Off to the left in the Colma district a great many very cheap homemade windmills lift the water to irrigate the market gardens -these are real farmers -but the Murphy mill is pictured as one of our beautiful and interesting "agriculturalists." Artist E. A. Burbank, with his gifted pencil, has reproduced it in faithful detail, including its beautiful setting. Seems like you should hear the clop clop of wooden shoes, does it not, as you view this bit of the Old World in cosmopolitan Golden Gate Park?"