- Business - Janesville Sesquicentennial
-
- Janesville company turned on the lights in 1880
- The lights came on in Janesville in 1880, shortly after the
Janesville Electric Light Co. was
- incorporated on March 18, 1880.
- Incorporators included Dr. Henry PALMER and W. T.
VAN KIRK.
- Capt. Pliny NORCROSS bought the plant afterward and
expanded it. During his ownership, the
- main buildings were situated at the end of one of two raceways
on the Rock River that supplied the water power for the city's
earliest and best known - at the time - industry: milling. The
hydroelectric power plant was on the upper raceway between Milwaukee
and Dodge streets.
- NORCROSS also bought the waterpower at Fulton and
Indianford and ran it "in connection with
- the Janesville plant for the lighting of the city streets
and the furnishing of motive power, etc.," according to
a history of Rock County compiled in 1908 by William Fiske BROWN.
- In 1904, NORCROSS sold out to M. G. JEFFRIS,
Levi CARLE, T. O. HOWE, Stanley
- SMITH and George G. SUTHERLAND.
- They rebuilt and extended the plant. They bought the water
power and buildings owned by the old
- Janesville Cotton Manufacturing Co., the FORD Milling
Co., which gave them control of most of the city's water power.
- On the site of the old FORD mill at the west end of
the upper dam, the new partners built a
- modern power plant at a cost of $70,000 and rebuilt the plant
on the lower dam. The company increased its capital stock to
$100,000.
- Before NORCROSS sold his interest, the electric company
had started "in a small way" to furnish
- heat by forced circulation of steam-heated water. The power
company's new owners continued the practice, and "quite
a number of business blocks near Milwaukee Street Bridge are
heated in this way, among them being three entire JACKMAN
buildings."
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