The Harris Centennial
Harris --The past 100 Years
Electricity & Fuel
Page 70
Electricity
One would think that the thrill of turning
on the first light switch and seeing a room illuminated would be
a memorable moment, but for all our efforts we cannot find when
electric power first served Harris.
According to Sam King, who now resides in Carlisle, Pennsylvania,
is 93 years of age, and a former Harris resident, the year was
about 1908. Sam King remembers candling eggs in a Harris grocery
store in 1910, and there was electricity here then.
Sam states the year electric service came to Harris was also the
year board walks were replaced by cement sidewalks. According to
pictures, and Sam’s facts, the year must have been 1908.
Harris’ first electric power was supplied by the Sibley
Power Plant.
Iowa Electric Light and Power Company purchased the Northwestern
Light and Power Company on June 30, 1954. Harris was one of
Northwestern’s towns. Earlier records state that a Clark
Certificate was granted to two men on December 14, 1923, to
build, operate and transmit electricity in Harris. One of them,
John Reed, was a major party in Northwestern Light and Power
Company.
Do not let this confuse you. Harris did have electric power
before 1923. Records just cannot be found.
REA
Before the 1940’s, rural people of
our area did not have electricity in their homes unless they
owned a Delco plant or Windcharger. Harris was electrified the
year of 1923 through Northwestern Light and Power Co.
In 1935, Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act. John
Clough, Osceola County’s Extension Director at the time,
worked hard to get rural people to sign up for electric service
on their farm. The first REA loan was in 1939, and the first
construction contract was let for a substation and 191 miles of
line. The first line was energized December 23, 1939, and served
35 farms. A second loan was obtained in 1940, and many of the
Harris area received electric service that year. A new era of
modern living marched into the farm homes and much of the
drudgery of farm life vanished. Electric lights, milking
machines, refrigerators, cream separators, irons, stoves, water
pumps, washing machines reduced the hours farm people had to work
as well as make their tasks easier.
- Written by Vera Bergman
Fuel
To the first settlers no problem was
greater than the matter of fuel. The first fuel was from willow
brush found along the Ocheyedan, Little Rock and Sioux Rivers and
on the shores of West Okoboji. But that was poor in quality and
insufficient in quantity. It was a drive of from twenty-five to
thirty miles over poor roads and through soft sloughs to either
place. With the poor and ill-fed teams of that day it took two
days of hard work to get a load of green and unsatisfactory wood.
Prairie hay, which grew in abundance, was used to burn as an
experiment, but after several trials it was discovered to be the
best kind of hay for fuel. The long coarse slough hay that grew
abundantly in all the many sloughs, cut before it was frozen,
proved to be the best. When cut in proper season and well
prepared, it made good fuel either for cooking or heating
purposes. I remember my grandmother, Mrs. John Donnenwerth,
telling about evenings spent in twisting hay tightly and doubling
it so it securely tucked in, it made neat, tidy and useful fuel.
The tighter it was twisted the longer it lasted. A sack filled
with knotted hay would do a big baking or last through a long
cold evening. Buffalo chips were a prize fuel.
With the coming of the railroad, soft and hard coal was shipped
in but it was expensive. It had to be scooped from the rail car
– and a man could earn $1.50 per car to scoop it off. Hard
coal stoves were a blessing of the 1910’s and 1920’s.
Those of us who lived through the twenties and thirties will
never forget picking up corncobs from the feed lots. During the
thirties corn was so cheap that some people burned it for fuel.
The cottonwood trees planted by the settlers of the 1870’s
to 1900 made good cook stove fuel for residents of the
1910’s and 1920’s.