Vištytis Windmill

In 1925, Jonas Kanapkis, a hen, built a wooden windmill at the intersection of three roads on Ilgoji Hill. He worked a lot on the construction of the mill himself, hiring craftsmen for more complex works. Valcus, engines and part of other mill equipment were brought from Germany.Not one was enchanted by the sound of a rotating mill mill.The wind harnessed to work spun the wings of the mill for three decades, long chains of "patvadas" stretched on both sides of the road, sometimes queues had to wait for several days. Having a mill was not a bad business, so the local chickens looked jealously at the Kanapkis mill, because the saying about the richness of the miller "lives like a hunter's dogs, the pastor's gaspad and the miller's pigs" is not "broken from the finger".When the collective farm was formed, the wings of the mill were removed and the milling work was carried out by a motor and electricity, and since 1978 the ethnographic museum has been operating in the mill for more than a decade.In 1992, the museum was closed, the exhibits collected by local chickens were taken to the Vilkaviškis Regional Museum, and the mill was returned to the owners.A unique windmill with preserved technological equipment in good condition and the miller's house is included in the Register of Immovable Cultural Property of the Republic of Lithuania.A practical human helper almost a century ago, the Vištytis windmill is now only an exotic landscape decoration and an invaluable technical heritage waiting for our proper help and protection from extinction.