Blowin' in the Wind: Texas Ranchers Turn to Turbines

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In sun-seared West Texas, oil and gas producers have driven the regional economy since the mid-1920s. Now there's a new player in town---electricity-generating wind turbines. The turbines are sprouting by the hundreds on the low mesas that dot the desert landscape.

Wind turbines came to the small West Texas town of McCamey with the millennium. Construction began in 2000, and the first machines came on line in 2001. Florida Power and Light (FPL) now runs 688 area turbines.

"There are three things you're going to have to find," says Neil lames, production manager for the FPL wind operations around McCamey. "That's the wind, the transmission lines and the land. The McCamey area is very abundant in those three things."

McCamey, population 1,600, has always been blessed with …