THE MINERAL KING ROAD CORRIDOR
Historic Points of Interest
From
Britten's Store and Hotel, it was uphill most of the way, past
Washburn Cove and the old John Lovelace and "Slap-Jack" Smith
homesteads, to a modern miracle that imposed itself on the banks
of the Kaweah River. That miracle was the Hammond Power Station.
HAMMOND
In
the 1880s and 1890s, only a few small power plants were in existence
in all of America. The idea that large-scale electric power
generation could be economically feasible in an area of such
limited population as Tulare County was a concept beyond most
people's imagination. But there sat a power plant beside the
Mineral King road, "…almost a pioneer effort in the history
of long distance transmission [for] but one or two plants had
previously attempted to operate under so high a head," the Journal
of Electricity, Power and Gas touted in 1913.
Three
men with the needed imagination had made it happen. In 1890,
Ben M. Maddox, publisher of the Tulare County Times, had finally
seen his campaign to create a park for preservation of the Giant
Sequoia Groves reach fruition. He then turned his energies to
promoting the agricultural development of the Kaweah River delta
area.
Throughout
the 1870s and 1880s, dry farming of grains was the major source
of income in the central and southern California inland valleys.
Hand-dug wells provided only residential and garden water in
most places. By 1859, even such limited wells already had proved
that with enough water, citrus, deciduous fruit trees, grape
vines, nuts, and alfalfa flourished in the rich valley soil.
Ditches began to be dug from Sierra-fed streams and by 1888,
the first large citrus groves were planted.
The
water table was high in the eastern San Joaquin Valley, so people
experimented with ways to draw it up from the ground. Windmills
were used with tanks for storage until 1890, when Lindsay's
John Cairns bought a 10-horsepower Byron Jackson centrifugal
pump and powered it with a steam threshing machine. Soon steam
and gasoline engines were powering well pumps through agricultural
California, but they were shallow wells, inefficient and costly.
In
1891, Ben Maddox wrote an editorial promoting the idea that
cheap, reliable electric power could more efficiently pump the
amount of water needed for deep wells to bring a vast amount
of the valley's acreage under cultivation. And incidentally,
to bring electricity to the growing city of Visalia.
Albert
Graves Wishon, bookkeeper and real estate agent, realized the
potential that such large agricultural development could promote.
He and William H. Hammond, a local farmer, decided to search
for investors to back the creation of a power company. They
focused on plans for facilities on the Kaweah River, for its
ample water resources and steep canyons created a natural power
source.
After
fruitless attempts to obtain the necessary financial commitments
from farmers or investors in the area, Bill Hammond approached
his brother, John Hays Hammond, a Yale graduated engineer. He
also recruited Leopold Hirsch, an investor in England. These
two men funded the start-up enterprise and the Mt. Whitney Power
and Electric Company was born. Work began in 1897 with lumber
cut at Atwell's Mill for a redwood flume. By 1898, all the necessary
franchises, deeds and rights-of-way had been obtained. Erection
of the flume on the Kaweah's East Fork was begun and construction
of the power house at Hammond soon followed.
The
Mt. Whitney Power and Electric Company was something of a family
affair. John Hays Hammond was considered its founder. William
H. Hammond was named president. Major R..P. Hammond was secretary.
He ran the office and also was in charge of securing the rights-of-way
for erection of transmission lines. On completion of the power
house, William H. Hammond, Jr. became a dynamo tender assistant.
The
Wishon family was well represented, too. D.L. Wishon was surveyor
and civil engineer. Young Emory Wishon also became an assistant
dynamo tender. His father, Albert Wishon, was vice president.
He effectively ran the company and brought the customers in.
When farmers were reluctant to replace their steam or gasoline-powered
pumps with electric models, Wishon sold the electric motors
to them on credit, then extended the company's power lines to
anyone who converted. The cost was $50 per year per horsepower,
a tremendous value at the time. As an added incentive, any farm
that converted to electric agricultural pumping could also have
their homes wired for electric lighting and heating.
Most
of the other officers and employees were local people. John
Broder was made assistant secretary but he and Bert Eagleson
acted as book-keepers. Robert Doble was chief engineer. Donald
Frye was the electrician. T.D. Sargent was in charge of building
the flume, and Smith Comstock produced the Sequoia lumber for
it from Atwell Mill. A.B. Cone was in charge of construction
of the power house at what came to be known as Hammond. On completion
of the project, he became foreman. Sam Comstock was cook. Gus
Parr was flume tender. J.H. Barre, Bert Hopping and Archibald
Robertson were dynamo tenders. Robertson later was made construction
foreman of four dams built above Mineral King.
On
June 19, 1899, Ben Maddox's Tulare County Times proclaimed "Now
Ready For Business! Living Wires Bring Power from the Kaweah
to Lindsay and Visalia."
Kaweah
Power House No. 1 at Hammond became an immediate success. The
enterprise quickly began to recoup the costs of its construction
phase. Everything seemed to work well. The 30,000 foot Sequoia
timber flume carried water from the East Fork about 6 miles
above Oak Grove to a 3320 foot steel penstock dropping to the
Hammond Power House. The pressure at the power house was 565
pounds per square inch with the velocity of the water issuing
from the nozzle over 3 miles per minute. The water wheels were
tangential with ellipsoidal buckets into which the water poured.
Some of the water was partially deflected away from the buckets
so the wheels would turn at a constant speed of 514 revolutions
per minute. These water wheels powered three 440 volt, 3 phase,
60 cycle generators and two exciter units which were belt-driven
from pulleys on the outer ends of the generator shafts.
Maintaining
a constant flow of water from the river proved to be a problem
in dry months. The East Fork canyon was too precipitous for
a major dam to be placed across it to regulate the flow. The
only solution was to dam several smaller lakes at the headwaters
of the East Fork. In the spring of 1904, Jim Broder was sent
to survey four lakes above Mineral King and construction of
trails and dams began for Monarch, Crystal, Eagle and Franklin
Lakes. The power company trails and improved fishing in the
lakes' impounded waters created new recreational opportunities.
With success, the Mt. Whitney Power and Electric Company began
to change its focus. More prominent names and backers were sought.
Albert Wishon left the company in 1902 to build a power plant
on the Tule River for rival San Joaquin Power Company. By 1913,
only John Hays Hammond was still listed as founder of the company.
The president and general manager was John Coffee Hays. Secretary
was E.F. Baker. And Ben Maddox, the initial promoter, had become
vice president and business manager. In 1920, Southern California
Edison Company completed purchase of Mt. Whitney Power and continues
to operate Hammond Power House No. 1 as well as two others on
the Kaweah River today.
For
the early traveler up the Mineral King road, the Hammond power
station was a fascination and a tourist attraction. That such
a large and innovative enterprise had been initiated in rural
Tulare County also was a point of pride. For several years after
1899, the Mineral King stages often stopped at Hammond for a
tour.
"Everyone
was glad to leave the stage and move around a bit," Alice Crowley
recalled. "The men were bold enough to step inside the power
house and look at the strange equipment in operation. It was
too frighteningly noisy for the rest of us to go near. We children
followed Mamma and the two women to a shady spot on the opposite
side of the road, where we huddled against a fence and hoped
nothing would happen to us there. We were certain we could see
electricity flashing inside the building and snapping like lightning."
It
was a relief when the stage driver and other men came out of
the building and the trip up Red Hill began.
(CREDITS:
"System of the Mt. Whitney Power and Electric Company" by Rudolph
W. Van Norden in Journal of Electricity, Power and Gas,
Dec. 27, 1913; "Power Development of Three Rivers", by Margaret
Sippel, Three Rivers Historical Society; "Power from the Southern
Sierra" by Laurence H. Shoup; "Power Plant at Fork of Tule"
by John Snyder, in Los Tulares, Sept. 1986; "Wheelers, Pointers
and Leaders" by Monroe C. Griggs; "The Mineral King Dams", by
Don Pinkham in Mineral King Chronicle, Spring 2001; "Kaweah
No. 1 Celebrates a Century of Hydro Power", by John Elliott
in The Kaweah Commonwealth, July 2, 1999; Heading for
the Hills" by Alice Crowley Jackson. Compilation by Louise Jackson.
Webmaster, Jillaina Brown)
www.MineralKing.org: Last updated May 24, 2003
