Style Magazine_ El Dorado Hills and Folsom_December 2018

in history
Water
Works
Horatio G. (H.G.) Livermore arrived in California in 1850
banking on gold to make his fortune. What he learned instead
was how to turn water to gold.
In the early 1860s, H.G. and his sons, Horatio Putnam
(H.P.) and Charles Edward, gained a controlling interest
in the Natoma Water and Mining Company, which was
organized in 1853 to divert water from the American River
to mining camps. The Livermores had a grander vision for
the water, however.
H.G. was from New England where water wheels
were used to operate factories and mills. He envisioned
creating a water-powered industrial center in Folsom
and made plans to build a sawmill, which required the
construction of a dam and canal.
He negotiated the first labor contract between a water
company and the state of California in 1868. In exchange
for 350 acres of property the state needed to build a
prison, he received 30,000 hours of convict labor to build
the dam. The first Folsom Dam was completed in 1891.
H.G. never saw the completion of the dam or sawmill,
however. He passed away in 1879, and his sons took over the business. The sawmill
didn’t prosper, but the younger Livermores realized that instead of using water to
power manufacturing, it could be used to power generators to create electricity.
H.P., his brother Charles, and Albert Gallatin of Huntington-Hopkins Hardware
created the Sacramento Electric Power and Light Company in 1892. They explored
the market for electric streetcars, streetlights, and factories and the logistics of
building a powerhouse in Folsom to supply those markets.
In 1884, Thompson-Houston and Capital Gas companies began supplying
limited electricity to Sacramento using small coal-burning steam engines. Most
Are you a
fan of these photos?
The photographer, Carrie
Nicole Burkett of Carrie
Nicole Photography, will be
selling them—along with her
other work—at this month’s
Christmas Arts and Crafts Fair
on December 2 from 9 a.m.
to 4 p.m. in Historic
Folsom.
Folsom Powerhouse
State Historic Park
by JERRIE BEARD
electricity being generated at the time was direct current, costly, and
could only be transmitted short distances. H.P. wanted to take
advantage of new alternating current technology, which would
allow electricity generated in Folsom to be transmitted to
a substation in Sacramento 22 miles away. He received
designs for the powerhouse from Westinghouse and General
Electric and chose to work with the latter because they were
willing to put $20,000 in machinery and equipment into the
powerhouse and help fund construction bonds.
Work on the Folsom Powerhouse began. Elihu
Thompson reworked four Edison directcurrent
generators into alternating current
generators. Transmission lines were run
to a substation at Sixth and H Streets in
Sacramento where the electricity would be
converted to direct current and delivered
to streetcars, which Livermore operated
through a franchise.
On July 11, 1895, at 5 p.m., crowds waited
at the substation in Sacramento for the first
transmission of power from Folsom. When
the switch was thrown, nothing happened.
Crossed wires were soon detected and repaired,
but the second attempt at 2 a.m. produced a
similar result. A governor controlling the speed
of the powerhouse generator had broken. A
replacement part was obtained from the
Southern Pacific Railroad and at 4 a.m. on
July 13, 1895, a 100-gun salute by the military
detachment from Battery B shattered the
morning hours announcing the arrival of the
first electrical transmission from the Folsom
Powerhouse.
According to the July 15, 1895, issue of the
Sacramento Daily Union, the Folsom Powerhouse
was the largest long-distance transmission
plant in the world, while the Folsom Dam
was the largest in the U.S. In the same article,
F.O. Blackwell, an engineer from General
Electric, prognosticated that this cheap source
of power would allow “this State to supply
her own needs very largely, if not wholly in
manufactured products.”
The Folsom Powerhouse operated until 1952
when the original Folsom Dam was destroyed
during construction of the new dam. The
powerhouse was donated to the State of
California in 1958 and is open to the public
Wednesday-Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.
sources
parks.ca.gov/?page_id=1340
fairoakshistory.org/timeline.pdf
California State Parks brochure “Folsom Powerhouse State
Historic Park”
Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 89, Number 123, 15 July 1895
Photos by Carrie Nicole Photography.
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