The dike is a very popular tourist attraction with many turnouts to observe how it was constructed beginning in 1928 with Cornelis Levy as chief engineer.
Some of the windmills were very large structures. One of these large windmills (126 feet from the ground to the tip of its blade) was built in the Netherlands in 1761, and was dismantled and shipped to Holland, Michigan in 1964. This windmill, called the DeZwaan, opened for tourists the next year as the only authentic Dutch operating windmill in the United States, and it still today grinds locally-grown wheat into flour.
The DeZwaan especially attracts tourists at Holland’s annual Tulip Time festival, and can be found at Windmill Island Gardens, open from mid-April to mid-October (http://www.windmillisland.org/). Also, a book is available about the history of this impressive windmill.
Before leaving the province of North Holland, we wanted to spend one night in a larger city, so we headed for the city of Haarlem, a city of 150,000 people.