De Zwaan is an authentic Dutch windmill in the city of Holland, Michigan. The windmill's name is Dutch for The Swan or Graceful Bird. It is the oldest authentic, working Dutch windmill in the United States. De Zwaan is located in Windmill Island municipal park. History When Holland, Michigan residents Willard Wichers and Carter Brown were looking for a way to pay homage to the city's Dutch heritage, they began a project to bring a Dutch windmill to the United States. However, many of these monumental structures had suffered serious damage in World War II. As a result, the Dutch government had placed a ban on the sale of windmills outside the Netherlands. Wichers and his group were able to gain an exemption by selecting a heavily damaged mill known as De Zwaan that had been in operation in Vinkel Netherlands since being moved there in 1884 by a family named Van Schayk. De Zwaan was at the center of a controversy, with three local agencies unable to determine the future of the damaged windmill. The Dutch government decided to sell it to Wichers for $2800, making De Zwaan the last windmill to leave the Netherlands. Windmill authorities in the Netherlands provided the City of Holland with the history of De Zwaan, noting that it had been built in Krommenie, Netherlands, in 1761 as a grain mill set on a raised base to better capture the wind. In October, 1964, De Zwaan arrived aboard the Prins Willem van Oranje. It was unloaded at the Muskegon harbor and transported by truck to Windmill Island in Holland. It took approximately 6 months to reconstruct the mill. The city erected a raised base rather than the mound of earth it had been set on in Vinkel so as to restore it to its original design when it stood in Krommenie. Once erected, the City of Holland celebrated as having been over 200 years old at the time. In April 1965, the windmill was formally dedicated on Windmill Island, a site reclaimed from a swamp on the eastern end of Lake Macatawa. It is open from late April through early October. When winds are favorable ( from the west), De Zwaan's diameter blades are usually in motion. In 2015, the City of Holland celebrated the 50th anniversary of De Zwaan being in Holland. In preparation for the celebration, De Zwaan's resident Miller and historian,