Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: Barry Swackhamer
Taken: January 19, 2014
Caption: What is that windmill thing?
Additional Description: This is an artistic representation of an Archimedes Screw, a device imagined by the ancient Greek scientist Archimedes (287-212 B.C.E.), and created again in the late 1870s by Andrew Oliver to move water between salt ponds. The Oliver Salt Company owned this land for much of the twentieth century and used it to harvest salt by moving water through a series of shallower ponds, letting sun and wind do the evaporative work to produce crystallized salt.
An Archimedes Screw is wind-powered and can pump up to 2,000 gallons of water a minute. The windmill blades turn the long screw at the base, which carries water up and into troughs that moved (flowed) other ponds. You can still see the frame of an old screw pump farther out, towards the highway. Rather than pumping water, it is now a common roost for Red-Tailed Hawks and White-Tailed Kites. – information sign posted at a nearby kiosk

This "artistic representation" is located near the Hayward Shoreline Interpretative Center.
Submitted: January 19, 2014, by Barry Swackhamer of Brentwood, California.
Database Locator Identification Number: p264847
File Size: 3.241 Megabytes

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