The Waterfall That Would Light Seattle
In 1895, promoters promised to harness Snoqualmie Falls—taller than Niagara and only 23 miles from Seattle—and send thousands of horsepower over copper wire.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The following account is taken from the Buffalo Courier of January 21.
A letter received yesterday from D. M. Gilman, who is in New York in the interest of the Snoqualmie Falls Electric Power Company, reports good progress. He says that nothing ever done in Seattle has given the city so wide and favorable an advertisement as this scheme of transmitting power from the falls. The matter is brought more prominently to the notice of Eastern people by the attempt to harness Niagara Falls, and by the fact that the plant to be erected at Snoqualmie Falls will be the largest in the world, excepting Niagara.
The company's capital stock is $2,500,000, divided into 25,000 shares of $100 each, first mortgage bonds. The directors are Daniel M. Gilman; the Hon. Watson C. Squire, United States senator; Griffith Davies of Seattle; the Hon. Smith M. Weed; and Charles W. Wells of New York.
The company has acquired 1,250 acres on both sides of the river, thereby controlling the power of Snoqualmie Falls, in the state of Washington, 23 miles eastward from Seattle. This is the largest water power in the state and the most advantageously situated for cheap power. The height of the falls is 288 feet, or 168 feet greater than Niagara. The theoretical energy of the falls is 51,657 horse power.
The company plans to develop and deliver by electric transmission 5,000 horse power at Seattle, where already that amount of power is generated by steam at a cost of over $10 a horse power a year and used for electric lighting, electric and cable railways, and manufacturing establishments. The company has an offer from parties who have successfully operated similar works at Niagara to furnish the electric plant, ready to run, and copper cables to connect the falls with Seattle. The largest electric lighting and power company in Seattle has offered to buy the supply of electricity at a price that would pay the interest on the bonds and a dividend on the stock. The acceptance of this offer alone, the Courier says, would assure the success of the enterprise.
If the company can furnish power to Tacoma, Everett and adjacent territory by connecting with its power house at small additional expense, the possibilities of transmission are broad. A letter from the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company says that transmitting power by electricity 20 to 50 miles is no longer an experiment; plants are already transmitting successfully up to 30 miles or more, and within the next year it may be done at 50 miles. The Snoqualmie Falls and Niagara plants, it says, will be the largest electric plants in the world, each proposing to transmit from 5,000 to 10,000 horse power on commencing operations at a distance of 23 to 26 miles.
“The height of the falls is 288 feet, or 168 feet greater than Niagara. The theoretical energy of the falls is 51,657 horse power.”
The Snoqualmie Falls hydroelectric plant was built and became an engineering landmark; falling water there still generates electricity today. Then as now, Seattle's growth depended on who controlled the region's rivers and transmission lines—and who paid for the power.
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