Windmill House

A third grade friend lived in the Windmill House. That was back in the late 1940s. I was invited to spend the night there by a girl named Kathleen. I remember the house very well. My mother took us to Washington State in March of 1949 and for some reason though we moved back to Lakeside I was never friends with Kathleen again.

I did not see the house again until many years later. In the early 1970s  my children's grade school class went to see the Native American grinding rocks that are on the property. Some of them  are very deep into the rocks.

The house is now surrounded by an RV park. The land was once part of a Mexican land grant and before that it was a Native American village. Los Coches creek crosses the property and there are springs near by. It was quite wonderful all those years ago before it was covered by trailers and RVs. The whole area should have become a real park.

A person can just drive in and see the windmill house. Jackie and I did that yesterday after our lunch at the Italian resturant near there. She was surprised as most people can live around here for years and not know the Windmill House exists. There is a sign that gives some of the history of the house. I had always thought it was much older than it is. It was built in 1925 and the windmill was built to generate electricity. I had always thought it was to pump water. Two of the owners of the house were listed but not my friend's family.



I remember that we had to leave the house and go out to a separate building to go to the bathroom and that seemed scary at night. Kids remember stuff like that.