Summary
Over a century of Dutch history comes alive at Little Chute Windmill. The area’s tallest tourist attraction, this tribute to Dutch settlers allows visitors to experience an authentic working windmill, see Dutch artifacts & explore Dutch genealogy. An iconic symbol of Dutch heritage, Little Chute’s fully-functioning Dutch windmill is an 1850’s design from the province of North Brabant, Netherlands. It was built by 4th-generation Millwright, Lucas Verbij, disassembled, and shipped to where it proudly stands today. One of the area’s defining tourist area attractions, the windmill is dedicated to the Dutch immigrants who built the town of Little Chute, WI, and is operated & maintained by nonprofit organization
Our tours are run by volunteers, if planning a visit, please call ahead as occasionally we may not be open on one of our normally open days.
More About This Business
A piece Dutch heritage in the heart of the Midwest, the Little Chute Windmill, Inc.is nonprofit organization that operates & maintains an authentic Dutch windmill in the center of downtown Little Chute, Wisconsin.
Our tours are run by volunteers, if planning a visit, please call ahead as occasionally we may not be open on one of our normally open days.
The Van Asten Visitor Center features a museum on the history of Dutch settlement in the region, which the Little Chute Historical Society helped develop and maintains. Here you will find an historical archive & genealogy workspace with educational tools for all ages and a monument to the Midwest’s Dutch heritage.
Our gift shop offers an array of uniquely Dutch gift items ranging from Delft blue pottery items, apparel, pillows, kitchen towels, jewelry, and stroopwafles; a traditional sweet treat consisting of two round waffles stuck together with a sticky sweet syrup. We also offer visitors a way to create an especially personal connection to the windmill and their Dutch heritage in the form of commemorative bricks.
The Little Chute Windmill was designed and constructed in the Netherlands by 4th generation millwright and master windmill craftsman Lucas Verbij of Verbij Hoogmade BV, a multigenerational family business known the world over for designing iconic Dutch windmills and other monumental builds since 1868.
The Little Chute Windmill is a smock mill, named for its resemblance to the smocks period farmers often wore! Smock mills are easily identifiable thanks to several design-build trademarks, including sloping weatherboarded or thatched towers with a hexagonal or octagonal shape, as opposed to the cylindrical shape of tower mills, as well as their masonry exteriors, as opposed to timber. By harnessing the power of the wind, the sails of the windmill activated the interior mechanics, bringing the grain miller to life and turning grain into flour. Our visitors can expect to see all these mechanics up close, in person, and fully operational.