Windmills & Bump Gates

From San Marcos Daily Record April 17, 2008...

In the early 1930's bumper gates and windmills were as common as jackrabbits in the rural Texas Hill Country. For those who have never had the privilege of bumping a bumper gate, it is a gate suspended from the top of a tall, stout, central pole by two cables that go from the top to opposite ends of a wide, board gate.

Near the top, these cables wrap once around the pole to provide a force to keep the gate shut against a fence post at each end of the gate. Area ranchers, mostly in dusty, black, Ford pickup trucks, would drive up in a cloud of dust, bump the gate, and then briefly hit their brakes as the gate began to swing open.

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