Before Beef Capital, Hereford Was Windmill City

Before Hereford called itself the Beef Capital of the World, it went by Windmill City. About 400 towers once dotted the landscape. Travelers on the railroad could see them from miles away.

Those towers were working machines, not scenery. Wind turned pumps that brought groundwater to the surface. Windmills made gardens easier, led to irrigated farming, and helped settlers and stockmen move onto the arid High Plains. A 1970 historical marker in Santa Fe Park preserves that older story.

Hereford's newer beef identity came later. The older nickname explains what helped farming and stock raising take hold on dry country: a way to lift water from the Ogallala Aquifer.

The two nicknames read like a sequence. The machinery that pulled water onto the plains came before the industry that became the city's calling card. Windmill City is the quieter half of Hereford's public story.