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Baker City, Oregon: Broken Mystery Windmill

Full-size Dutch windmill is of fairly recent vintage, but it's abandoned and falling apart. Across the street from a Chinese cemetery.

Address:
Windmill Rd, Baker City, OR
Directions:
I-84 exit 304 off I-84. Turn east onto Campbell St., then make first right onto Windmill Rd.
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Mystery windmill.

Broken Windmill

An old windmill sits just east of Interstate 84 behind the Super 8 motel. There is nothing on the site to say what its original purpose was, but it may have been a restaurant or an ice cream stand. Most of the vanes are missing and it looks abandoned. It is across the street from a Chinese cemetery that has a plaque describing its history of Chinese people dying far from home.

[William Bliss, 07/30/2019]

The windmill may have been built by John Bootsma, a local farm equipment manufacturer who meant it as a kind of billboard for some property he was developing just down the road (Bootsma is a Dutch name and the windmill is a Dutch windmill). He died in 2010, the property is mostly empty, and the windmill is falling apart.


Nearby Offbeat Places

Chinese GraveyardChinese Graveyard, Baker City, OR - < 1 mi.
World's Largest Map of the Oregon TrailWorld's Largest Map of the Oregon Trail, Baker City, OR - < 1 mi.
Boy and the BootBoy and the Boot, Baker City, OR - 1 mi.
In the region:
Town Named for a Website, Halfway, OR - 35 mi.

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