Volume 1, No. 7 Buffalo County Historical Society July 1978
PART II. THE KEARNEY CANAL 1887 AND AFTER
by Gene E. Hamaker
Eighty-seven was a year of big dreams for Kearneyites. The key to the realization of these dreams had to be the decision to convert water power to electric power to turn the wheels of industry and to light the city. The Kearney Canal and Water Supply Company was granted a franchise in June of 1887 to erect an electric plant and distribute electricity and power. The new Kearney Electric Light and Power Company was to have eight arc lights functioning by mid July, a deadline it met.
This first power was produced by a steam engine driving an arc light dynamo. Work on the water power facilities, however, was soon underway. A bulkhead and gates were placed in the canal and excavations made for a wheel pit and a tailrace. The turbine wheels arrived in November along with pipe four and a half feet in diameter for the flume. There was little irrigation in 1887, some fourteen acres at the Industrial School and an unknown amount on the Tilson place.
A test run was made on the turbines in March of 1888 and in early April electric power was being produced from the canal for the first time. Two more dynamos were ordered in June to provide power and incandescent lighting. These dynamos went into service in September. The rate for incandescent lights then was seventy-five cents a month for each lamp.
Additional capital became available in the summer, when H. D. Watson of Greenfield, Massachusetts, and perhaps other eastern investors, secured a one-half interest in Frank's properties. The capital resources of these investors and their contacts were probably behind the rapid expansion of interest in the new Minneapolis of the plains. A market for their electric power developed when the Kearney Street Railway Company, now controlled by Frank, decided to put electric motors in their cars. The electric trolleys would be seen on the streets in July of 1890.
Kearney's brief but spectacular boom is usually dated from 1889 and is without question closely related to the infusion of New England leadership. It was said that "out-siders" dominated the Chamber of Commerce established in 1889. The Chamber quickly churned out various promotional materials, some of which have survived. These give us a general impression of the canal and power development. Water from the sixteen mile long canal fell sixty to sixty-five feet (probably less) to turn double turbine wheels producing 350 horse power. There were three 50,000 watt dynamos, two 40,000 watt dynamos, and one arc light machine. The original power plant was too small to meet anticipated demand, thus a three story pressed brick power house was being built and an 800 horse power Hercules turbine wheel ordered. Uncertainty over the flow of the Platte led to efforts to dig a basin to tap the underground river and ensure a supply of water: its fate is not known.
No such misgivings plagued the citizens of Kearney, who pledged $250,000 in 1889 to meet the demands of New England interests proposing to erect a cotton mill in Kearney, using water power from the canal. Construction on the mill began in 1891. The mill tapped the canal at Deep Creek where Echo lake was formed. Here, with a fall of forty-two feet, two thirty-five inch register gate Victor turbines were set in place. A coal fired 500 horse power steam plant ensured operation when the water supply was inadequate.
There were extensive improvements in the power facilities in 1890. During the summer, three new boilers and a 425 horse power Corliss engine were installed in the yet unfinished power house. The pit was dug east of the new building for the Hercules wheel, which arrived in October. The building to cover the wheel was probably not erected, nor the wheel put on line, until 1891. Six dynamos were now in use, with one in reserve. Excepting forty acres at the industrial school and possibly "a few, small patches" elsewhere, no attempt was being "made to utilize" irrigation in 1890.
The dry years of 1890, 1893 and 1894 may explain the demand for an enlargement of the canal realized in the latter year. The canal was now nine feet deep and thirty-five feet wide, at least for the first fourteen miles. In some respects the work was to no avail. The Kearney Boom began to collapse in 1892, the year the cotton mill opened. The national depression commencing in 1893 completed the process of disintegration. The city of Kearney, which had more than doubled in size between 1885 and 1890, began to decline.
How much land was irrigated from the canal in these troublesome years is difficult to judge. Suffice it to say that the amount was low, probably not over 160 acres at best; that the amount varied from year to year; and, that the supply of water was undependable.
In July of 1898 the canal and power facilities were sold, apparently under a decree of foreclosure. The new Kearney Power and Irrigation Company had its office in Lincoln. Perhaps to recover some of the investor's capital, the company sold the power and electrical facilities in October of 1899 to a Missouri firm: The Northwestern Heat and Electric Company. Plans were prepared for extensive improvements and work initiated in June of 1900, but that fall disaster struck.
Workmen arriving at the plant the morning of November 27, 1900 found water coming through the embankment above the power house. They tried to stem the flow without success, then tripped the fire alarm at 9 a.m. to summon help. Before the morning was out, townsmen and farmers with teams swarmed over the slope trying to avert catastrophe. To slow the flow, cuts were made in the canal bank and an effort made to hold back the water in Kearney lake, but there was no stopping the rush of water. A chasm was ripped out of the hill, undermining the original wooden building west of the power house, sweeping it, the small turbine wheel and the arc light dynamo into the waste way. The water then assaulted the brick power house, tearing away the west end of the basement story and a part of the north wall, leaving the upper floors hanging precariously. By mid-afternoon the water had subsided enough for men to enter the power house and to carry out the new equipment stored there.
The cause of the break? A carelessly installed four inch pipe line put in during the summer to carry water to the steam plant. As the water level raised it soaked through the fill until the break occurred.
Such a blow could well have meant the end for the new company and, perhaps, in the long run it did. Repairs were begun immediately on the brick building. The restoration of home and business lighting was expected within a few days as the steamplant and the incandescent dynamos were undamaged. Lights for a part of the day may have been operating in late January of 1901 and were certainly functioning by March.
Visiting the plant in July, the editor of the Kearney HUB, found the scars on the side of the power house indiscernible. A pit had been dug for a larger water wheel to replace the one washed out west of the power house. A new masonry bulkhead was completed for each flume. Work was underway to improve the steam plant with the old boilers of 200 horse power capacity being re-set and a new boiler of 400 horse power to be added. The old engine was to be re-built and a new Corliss engine installed. A new General Electric dynamo supplied electricity for power purposes. The editor was again ready to predict Kearney would realize "the great expectations" raised by the construction of the canal.
Advantageous water conditions were to prevail in the next few years. Between 1901 and 1905 the volume of water in the Platte was such as to require but a few days of steam power production. Irrigation also increased to an estimated annual average of 350 acres.
A spate of problems assailed the canal and power companies in 1905. The first week of January the dynamo providing power to electric motors burned out. Partial power was restored in February, only to have the canal freeze up. Then the 13th of May, five inches or more of rain fell in the area, causing the canal to overflow. Numerous breaks developed, the most damaging of which was the wash out of the cotton mill waste weir. Finally, late in May the mortgage holders secured a decree of foreclosure against the canal company. It is probable that the canal was not repaired and the power plant operated on steam at least until 1909.
A new company, the Kearney Water and Electric Powers Company, was organized in August of 1908 to take over both the canal and power facilities. Extensive work had to be done to put the canal into operating condition. Too, new machinery had to be put in the power house and the old Hercules wheel, "broken and practically unfit for use," repaired.
A series of dry years will cause the new firm extensive problems. Litigation over water rights with upstream irrigators and water power companies was begun as early as 1911. These led to a 1913 decision by the State Engineer granting the Kearney canal water rights from September 1, 1886. Appealed to the courts, this decision was over-ridden by the state Supreme Court in February, 1915. The court assigned the company water rights from September 10, 1882, the date construction was begun.
The Kearney Water and Electric Powers Company, perhaps taken over by L. E. Meyers of Chicago in 1917, will be sold to the Central Power Company in 1919. In its first years of operation, Central Power will expend over a quarter of a million dollars for improvements, the major innovation being the installation of the Westinghouse generator and turbine in a tower beside the waste weir which was completed in 1922. The old steam and hydraulic works became a back-up to the new generator until, in 1929, two diesel engines replaced these units.
Central Power will be obliged to carry on the bitter and mostly unavailing struggle with upstream users for a water supply in the dry years of the 1930's. With Nebraska in the process of becoming a public power state, Central Power sold out to the Consumers Public Power District. In the early 1970's the Kearney Canal and power plant became a part of the Nebraska Public Power District.
This is a brief sketch of the history of the Kearney canal, but one sufficiently long to reveal the vision, tenacity - and the folly - of those people who have kept the project alive through the years.
Proofread 8-20-2005
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