On Saturday, April 23, the iconic Spocott Windmill complex just west of Cambridge celebrates Earth Day and commemorates its 50^th anniversary.

From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., visitors can step back into the 1800s at the windmill and its surrounding cluster of historic buildings recreating Lloyd’s Village. All will be open free of charge with tours, demonstrations and craft activities. Refreshments will be available and musical entertainment provided. The Dorchester County Forestry Board will once again be on hand offering tree saplings.

The village buildings include the 1870s Castle Haven School House, the Adaline Wheatley Cottage, a doctor’s office, blacksmith shop, and the 1939 Lloyd’s Country Store and Museum, all relocated to the Spocott site. Wheatley, a free African American woman, was a renowned cook, nanny and house manager at Spocott, who resided there with her husband, freed slave and civil war veteran Columbus, and their seven children.

The windmill is a reconstruction of the working structure erected on the property in 1852 which blew down during a bad winter storm in 1888, according to current caretaker George L. Radcliffe Jr. It represents Maryland’s only post-style windmill, meaning that the entire edifice can be rotated into the wind.

Historically, many areas used water mills for grinding grain into flour, but flat, low-lying Dorchester County’s flowing water proximity made wind power more practical; there had once been at least 20 such mills. The last specimen’s remnants succumbed during a 1950s hurricane, according to Radcliffe.

Radcliffe’s ancestors were bequeathed the Spocott land by Lord Baltimore in the 1600s. His grandfather, Senator George L. Radcliffe, was 11 years old when the windmill fell on his father’s (John Anthony LeCompte Radcliffe) farm. Salvaging the steps and millstones, he also sustained a lifelong dream of rebuilding it.

In 1970, at age 93, Sen. Radcliffe formed the Spocott Windmill Foundation and secured funding. He then commissioned his neighbor, Dorchester County master boatbuilder James “Captain Jim” Richardson with the challenging project, which became a labor of love for the legendary craftsman.

Radcliffe Jr., who heads the foundation today, recounted Richardson’s challenge in his newly published biographical book on his grandfather’s life, “Call Me Cousin George: A Personal Look at the Life of Sen. George L. Radcliffe.”

“We couldn’t go by the book because there wasn’t any book that showed the construction details we needed. We couldn’t copy a model because there aren’t any. We couldn’t ask anybody because there’s nobody left who knows how corn-grinding windmills were put together.

“What we had to do was construct our mill by trial and error, using our own ideas. When we ran into a problem, we simply had to figure it out ourselves. Sometimes we guessed right and sometimes we didn’t,” Richardson recalled.

The timbers for the reconstruction came from the same nearby woodland used for the original mill. However, determining which specific trees should be used took over a year alone. The most vital of these became a strapping four-foot diameter oak selected for the central post anchoring the structure’s three-ton base, Radcliffe Jr. said.

Using the original 700-pound stones, the new mill was painstakingly put together piece by piece in Richardson’s boat yard then moved step by step to its past and future home. The 28-foot blades, as well as the rest of the structure, required precision balance and perfect weight distribution to prevent the entire structure being ripped apart by the vibration resulting from the enormous power generated, according to Richardson’s son-in-law, Tom Howell, who managed the construction effort.

“Fifty years after its construction, the mill operates with virtually no vibration as the blades spin and that massive top stone rotates over the stationary bed stone,” Radcliffe Jr. said.

Although some work remained, the mill was dedicated and presented to the senator on his 95th birthday, Aug. 22, 1972, two years before his death.

In an interesting historical footnote, the first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970, the same year the Spocott Windmill Foundation was formed. Senator Radcliffe was among the first to receive a voluntary land protection agreement called a deed of conservation easement, a legal agreement between a landowner and land trust or government agency to forego future construction.

Spocott Windmill Complex is located 6 miles west of Cambridge on Hudson Road, between Richardson and Castle Haven roads, on Rt 343. For more information, visit spocottwindmill.org, or contact George and Jackie Radcliffe at 410-228-7670 or via email at radclifg@gmail.com.

While demonstration of the actual milling process has been put on hold due to needed repairs, it’s expected to be working in time for an open house at the facility in October.

Additional Cambridge Earth Day events:

An Earth Day Poetry Celebration at Leonard’s Lane Boys and Girls Club on Thursday, April 21, from 4 to 6 p.m., will feature special guest Denis Minus, hand drum facilitator and Boys and Girls Clubs of Delaware Artist-in-Residence.

The event celebrates Earth Day and National Poetry Month, according to club coordinator Miram Moran.

Minus is the founder and artistic director of the Daande Lenol African Ballet and Drum Company, the first African ballet and drum studio in Delaware State University history. He is also artistic director and a co-founder of the Sankofa African Dance and Drum Company of Dover, under the executive direction of local councilman Reuben Salters.

For more information, contact Leonard’s Lane Boys and Girls Club manager Gabe Butler at 443-477-6505.

The Dorchester County Public Library Story Times will offer Earth Day themes on Wednesday, April 20, at 10:30 a.m. at the Main Branch in Cambridge and 2 p.m. at the Hurlock Branch.

For more information, call 410-228-7331 or 410-943-4331