In the 1870s and 1880s, Golden Gate Park was planted on sand dunes that required constant irrigation to sustain any plant life. The Spring Valley Water Company charged exorbitant rates for the water needed to green this ambitious project. In 1902, the Park Commission found an ingenious solution: build windmills to pump free groundwater from beneath the dunes. The Dutch Mill was completed a year later, its great sails pumping thousands of gallons per hour to nurture the growing forest of trees and gardens.

Electric pumps made the windmill obsolete by 1913, and without purpose, the structure fell into disrepair. By the 1950s, it stood in ruins, its sails long gone and its tower crumbling. The resurrection began in 1964 when Eleanor Rossi Crabtree, daughter of former San Francisco mayor Angelo Rossi, led a citizens' commission to restore both windmills. The Dutch Mill was finally returned to working condition in 1981, placed on the San Francisco Designated Landmark list that same year.

Today the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden blooms at the windmill's base, planted each spring with thousands of colorful tulips. The restored mill stands as a monument to San Francisco's determination to create beauty in unlikely places. Its neighbor, the Murphy Windmill to the south, tells the same story of ambition, decay, and rebirth that characterizes so much of this city by the bay.