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Local plant could be oldest in world
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| The old Durango Power Plant’s east entrance./Photo
courtesy Discovery Museum
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"I just hope people will understand what happens behind the light switch," says Durango Discovery Museum Project Director Jeff Vierling. "Now your power comes from California, but until just 1974, it came from right here. And that's not that long ago."
In fact, the history of the Durango Power Plant cuts deeper than just supplying power to the city. It played a key role in the development of energy distribution as we know it today.
Never knew that? No one else did, either, until the Children's Museum researched the plant's history while planning its move into the building along the Animas River. Built in 1893, the Durango Power Plant is the "oldest AC steam plant left in the country, and maybe the world," says Vierling. "It's a great story that's never been told, but it's important for a town that trades on its history."
The story of the Durango Power Plant began in the late 1800s, when Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla were trying to convince municipalities to adopt their competing forms of transmitting electricity. Edison was promoting his DC (direct current) form of transmission, while Tesla was urging companies to adopt his AC (alternating current) method. "Everything about AC had a technical advantage," says Vierling, "but DC was winning the PR war."
AC ultimately won the electric wars - it's the method used to transmit electricity today - but only after the method was tested and proven in the San Juan Mountains.
In the 1880s, L.L. Nunn, a seafood-restaurant owner in Durango, invested in the Gold King Mine, above Telluride. The mine soon exhausted the wood around the mine for generating power and had to laboriously haul coal in by horseback. It was a lot of time and money for little return. As a result, explains Vierling, Nunn borrowed $100,000 from the mine and persuaded George Westinghouse to come out and build an AC power plant. That plant was built in Ames, near Ophir, in 1891.
"That was the first commercial use of AC power in the world, right here in the San Juans," says Vierling.
Nunn was so taken with AC power's success, Vierling adds, that he later built a school in Telluride to teach students how to use and develop AC power.
Following the success of the Ames plant, in 1893 Durango built the first municipal steam-powered AC power plant in the world. The plant powered the city's businesses, residences and streetcar system. (Doctors at Mercy would call the plant before surgery to make sure power would be available throughout the operation.) Taking a cue from Durango's success, in 1895 Telluride also began receiving AC energy from the Ames plant. In 1895, the first Eastern AC power plant, at Niagra, N.Y., was built - AC power had become the standard for the future of electricity transmission.
Although the Ames plant is still standing, it has been rebuilt twice, so "there's nothing left of the original plant," says Vierling. That means the Durango plant may be the oldest of its kind, he says."It may be the oldest AC plant left in the world," he says. "It's definitely the oldest steam-powered AC plant."
- Ken Wright
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