A southern Iowa town known for its tulips and Dutch heritage will soon be known as the home to the tallest working windmill in the United States. A giant crane will hoist the specially constructed windmill frame onto its brick base in Pella tomorrow morning.Elaine DeBoef is chair of the Windmill Interpretive Center project. She says the existing brick structure is 40-feet high, while the windmill portion is 50-feet high. DeBoef says the blades are 80-feet long and will top out at about 120-feet, making it the tallest structure of its kind in the U-S.DeBoef says wood from 16 different nations was used to build the windmill, including azobe from West Africa which is two-thirds the strength of steel. DeBoef says a fourth generation windmill building company in the Netherlands was hired to build the structure from designs from around 1850, about the time Pella was settled.The windmill’s price tag is around three-point-three million dollars, about a million dollars is from the state’s Vision Iowa fund and the rest from private donations. Pella’s Tulip Time Festival is May 2-4.
