Arc lights began illuminating the darkness of New York City and Chicago in the late 1870s. Thomas Edison finally perfected the incandescent light bulb in 1879 after thousands of failed experiments and soon after was in an electric war with George Westinghouse over the viability of alternating, versus direct current.
Innovation was the word of the day in booming eastern industrial cities. Out of the plains and in the foothills and mountains of Wyoming Territory, modernization would have to wait a few more years.
Despite the relative isolation of Wyoming, Cheyenne became the first city west of the Mississippi to install electric lights. An arc light was powered up on January 5, 1883.
The electricity came from a coal fired power plant owned by the Brush-Swan Electric Light company.
Electric lights were expensive, only the wealthiest citizens could afford them, but they were a symbol of prosperity in an age where image meant everything. They soon sprang up in the elite section of Cheyenne.
Frances E. Warren, future governor, was the first one to install electric wires in his home. A year later, arc lights lit up every intersection in downtown Cheyenne.
Electricity was originally used simply for lighting homes at night, but the kerosene lantern, campfire, and hearth remained the light source for much of rural Wyoming for another half-century.
Westinghouse and alternating current won the power battle. Ever the inventor and entrepreneur, Edison began inventing, designing and marketing appliances that used his rival’s AC system.
There was no national, regional, or state funding for power generation, but a creative interpretation of the 1877 Desert Land Act by Asmus Boysen led to the first large scale hydroelectric dam in Wyoming.
Small power plants generating a few kilowatts were placed below dams along creeks on large ranches, and coal and kerosene powered generators dotted a few of the larger towns along the Union Pacific Railroad but aside from Cheyenne, Laramie, Rock Springs and Rawlins, even municipal electricity was a rarity.
Boysen brought the powerhouse online in 1908. In classic case of cart before the horse, he had no customers. Boysen marketed the power, eventually delivering it to Shoshoni in 1913, and to individual farms on the west side of the reservoir building up behind his dam.
20 miles east of Shoshoni, J.B. Oakie installed a coal powered, steam power plant at Lost Cabin to illuminate his store, hotel and saloon around 1910.
Electricity arrived in Riverton in 1914 from the Popo Agie Light and Power Company. P.B. Dykeman, was the manager of the electric company.
Riverton eventually had its own stationary power plant operated by the Midwest Public Service Company, but coal and diesel power generation was expensive in comparison to hydroelectric.
Riverton Chronicle – February 12, 1926
“While the Midwest Public Service Company has a first class generating plant in Riverton, it does not wholly depend upon that for the electric service for Riverton and vicinity. Power from the U. S. Government Reclamation plant at Pavillion and from the Power Plant, at Boysen is brought to Riverton on the Company’s transmission lines for the benefit of the people in Riverton, Hudson and vicinity.
The two modern hydro-electric plants fully insures this territory with abundance of cheap, constant and dependable electric power. Midwest Public Service Company is a part of the County, its efforts are and will be to develop the resources of the territory and it will give every encouragement in its power to any enterprise calculated for the betterment of Riverton and its environs.”
Others soon followed his example on a smaller scale. The Sinks Canyon Power Plant opened in 1912. It produced power along the Popo Agie near the present site of the Sinks Canyon Visitor Center. The power plant sold electricity to Lander residents through the Lander Electric Light and Power Company and the Popo Agie Power and Light Company.
Hudson Power and Light opened in 1920 using a diesel generator to produce electricity.
In 1923, the Boysen powerplant shut down after a disastrous flood and impending lawsuits against Boysen from the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. Badwater overflowed its banks after a torrential downpour, sweeping a locomotive and cars off the tracks southwest of Bonneville and sending a surge of water that breached the dam, flooding the railway tunnels.
Shoshoni went dark until power arrived a couple of years later from Pilot Butte.
The first federal intervention in electric power came with the construction of Diversion Dam in 1923. The dam was part of an irrigation and flood control project, but it offered a substantial drop of 90 feet to nearby basin. That basin became Pilot Butte Reservoir, also called Morton Lake, and led to the creation of the longest running power plant in Fremont County in 1925 operating until 2013.
Midwest Public Service purchased Pilot Butte electricity and strung lines to Shoshoni, Pavillion, Hudson and Riverton.
In 1929, Dubois built a power plant on Warm Springs Creek. The Dubois Service Company delivered electricity to the town and nearby ranches and in 1930 extended the line to join Pilot Butte and to also offer electricity to Ft. Washakie and Ethete.
In 1929 Mountain States Power Company began buying Pilot Butte electricity with a line to Hudson. In 1943 Dan Svilar purchased Hudson Power and Light, changing the name to Svilar Power and Light. He ended the contract with Mountain States and used a diesel engine that ran each evening for a few hours to power the lights in Hudson. In 1984, the Svilar family sold the diesel power generator to Rocky Mountain Power.
1943 was also the year that the Riverton Valley Electric Association began supplying electricity to rural areas of Fremont County.
Originally a novelty, electricity slowly gained a grip on American consumers.
Tiny Hiland, Wyoming was the first town on U.S. Highway 20/26 to generate electricity. Hiland owner Robert Smith coined the term “Bright Spot” for his store and restaurant. In 1923 he opened and featured ice cream and cold storage provided by a kerosene powered generator. The electrically lit sign “Bright Spot” was visible across the prairie.
Similar generators were in place at Welty’s in Dubois, Burris, Lenore and Gardner’s Market between Kinnear and Morton.
It was the beginning of the end for ice houses.
Innovation was another driving force for electrification. On November 19, 1925, the first night high school football game in America took place between Midwest and Natrona High school.
The game was previewed heavily in Natrona County newspapers who diligently described the 15, 1,000 candlepower lights, augmented by gas flares along the sidelines and the end zone of the Oiler’s field. A write-up of the game came in the November 20, 1925, edition of the Casper Herald.
CASPER MIDWEST HIGH IN NIGHT FRAY
Estimated 1,000 People Saw “Ghost” Game In Oil Fields
The first interscholastic football, to be played by artificial light was staged in a spectacular way last night at Midwest when the local Natrona County high school eleven defeated the Midwest team, the final score being 20 to 0, as a crowd of 1,000 spectators witnessed the “ghost” game in the oil field town. Instead of the usual mud-colored hall a white enameled pigskin was used, and the spectators as well as the players were able to see each play perfectly in the glare of fifteen 1,000-candlepower lights aided by gas flares along the lines. The field was almost as light as day as the lights threw their dazzling gleams over the field which was in perfect shape for the game. At 7:30 the game was called but the struggle did not end until about 9 o’clock. To make the event possible the Midwest high school and the Midwest Refining company worked in cooperation that the oil field workers, usually denied the fun of watching a football game because they are staged in the afternoon, might see a real battle on the gridiron.
Although the score might indicate a one-sided game, the Midwest boys had the local team worried several times when they neared the goal posts. The Midwest eleven were at one time on the 3-yard line and a score seemed possible, but a fumble resulted disastrously for the Oilers. Casper’s boys showed good form. Dowler was responsible for two touchdowns, while Leuthart scored one, the outcome of a perfect triple pass. Allsman and Dowler each kicked goals, scoring one point each for their team. Crater made several end runs that brought the team within striking distance. Vandeveer acted as referee, Powell was umpire and Hyde was head linesman. At the end of the first half the score stood 14 to 0 in Casper’s favor. Dowler having made las two scores in the first half, while Leuthart got over the line during the second half of play.
It wasn’t just refrigeration, night football, and electric lights that led to the demand for electricity. Radio was a driving force as well.
KDKA went on the air in Pittsburgh on November 2, 1920, and thousands soon followed. KDFN began broadcasting from Casper on January 2, 1930, on AM 1470. They changed the call letters to KSPR from 1948 to 1959. We know it as KTWO. In 1967 KTWO moved from 1470 to “Clear Channel” 1030 AM.
In 1935 there were 12 million home radios, led by manufacturers Philco and Zenith. By 1938 four out of five homes had a radio.
The drudgery of washing clothes was eased with the arrival of the ringer washing machine invented by black housekeeper Ellen Eglin in Washington, D.C. Her hand powered ringer washer eliminated squeezing wet clothes by hand. Knowing her invention would never be used by white women since she was black, Eglin sold the rights to it for $18. Her original design remains the standard on mop buckets today.
It was just a short step of adding Eglin’s ringer above the already standard wooden tub washer to create the ringer washer of 1950s fame.
Electricity made it easier still, by 1936 there were 1.4 million electric washing machines in the US.
Radio, electric lights, washing machines and the plummeting prices of refrigerators from $600 in 1920, to $152 by 1940 created a demand for electricity.
The demand was ignored by republican presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover but became a federal mandate under democratic President Franklin Roosevelt with the introduction of the Rural Electrification Act in 1935.
Decried as “socialism” by republicans, the REA was a solution to the primitive conditions of farmers, ranchers and small-town citizens across the United States.
Rural America joined their fellow urban citizens in the surge of prosperity that electricity offered.
A popular song from World War I, was often used as a metaphor during the advance of electricity across the nighttime darkness of rural America during Roosevelt’s administration.
“How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm After they’ve seen Paree” was a hit around the piano with sheet music, and sold thousands of heavy-plated, 78 RPM phonograph records. Its chorus described the progress that comes with discovery.
“How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree’
How ya gonna keep ’em away from Broadway
Jazzin around and paintin’ the town
How ya gonna keep ’em away from harm, that’s a mystery
They’ll never want to see a rake or plow
And who the deuce can parleyvous a cow?”
The Tennessee Valley Authority brought flood control and electricity to the American South and the REA sent it west. Progress through industrial revolution transformed the lives of farmers and small-town citizens coast to coast. Without the REA, none of this would have happened.