The Short-Lived Mill Town of Power, West Virginia

As the Industrial Revolution roared across the United States, entire towns were built for the sole purpose of housing mill workers and their families. Like rural coal patch towns, mill towns were company towns, that is, owned lock, stock, and barrel by the mill. Workers lived, labored, played, and prayed in company-owned buildings on company-owned land. And when the mills closed, the buildings were often razed and the land was left fallow or sold to the highest bidder.

The village of Power was a mill town that sat along the Ohio River in Brooke County, West Virginia. It was formed in 1917 to house workers of the Windsor Power Plant, which would eventually provide electricity for the northern panhandle, western Pennsylvania, and as far west as Canton, Ohio.

Built just south of Beech Bottom (another company town built to house Wheeling Steel workers), Power thrived for nearly sixty years with around 100 homes, a bowling alley, community hall, post office, playground, and other small-town amenities. Surviving members recall their childhoods as if from a golden age filled with Halloween parties, weekend sock hops, and bicycle rides that lasted until the streetlights came on.

But unlike other company towns that carried on after the plants that supported them closed, Power disappeared in the 1970s when Windsor Power shut its doors. All that remains of this once bustling community is a cemetery, a set of steps, and the post office’s foundation. Today, only photographs and memories contradict this emptiness to reveal the lived reality of the people who once called the area home.

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The Quest for Power

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The story of Power, West Virginia begins, perhaps, on the streets of 19th Century Paris. Like many other civic leaders, Wheeling mayor and prominent industrialist, A. J. Sweeney, was fascinated by electric lighting when he first observed it in Paris, France during the 1878 Exposition. He had been appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant to represent the United States at the event, and he returned to Wheeling excited about the possibilities of illuminating the city with electricity. Unlike gas or kerosene lamps, electric lights provided a cleaner, safer means for working and living after the sun went down.

Originally, city leaders resisted investing in this new technology out of concern for cost and uncertainty about electricity’s longevity. Sweeney did not give up, however, and formed the Wheeling Electrical Company with his two sons, J. M. Sweeney and A. T. Sweeney, his son-in-law, J. B. Garden, and Garden’s father, John. After securing a resolution from city council permitting the installation of electric poles, wires, and other hardware, Wheeling Electrical contracted the Brush company to provide the poles, lamps, and other necessary fixtures to provide electricity throughout the city.

It was decided that the dynamo needed to produce electricity would be housed in the basement of A.J. Sweeney’s machine shop at 10 Twelfth Street, because of its central location in the business district. On September 13, 1882, just nine days after Edison turned on the lights in lower Manhattan, Wheeling Electrical turned on the lights for four businesses in Wheeling at a cost of one dollar per night per light (around $26 in 2020). The first subscriber, J. W. Grubb, added a light to his jewelry store at Twelfth and Market Streets. Other subscribers included Louis Schwab, John Sheekey, and William McLaughlin.

An article in the following morning’s Daily Intelligencer described the light up night as being well attended by curious spectators, who asked questions long into the evening. The reporter observed: “Crowds gathered in the streets and entered the stores to witness this strange form of illumination. Some marveled while others ridiculed it as an impractical method.” The skeptics did not prevail, of course, and the demand for electricity grew among business owners and residents. Soon, Wheeling Electrical had outgrown its quarters in Sweeney’s shop, and in 1888 ground was broken for the new power plant at Twenty-Second and Chapline streets due primarily to its proximity to natural gas, which produced the heat necessary to make the steam for electricity. The larger plant allowed for the production of electricity for twenty-four hours for the first time.

This location did not work for long, though. According to “Sixty Three Years of Progress, 1882-1945: Wheeling Electric Company,” “The art of electrical generation was still relatively new and the designers had made a mistake in placing the new generators on foundations that were too small. The result was a serious vibration that was communicated to residences within a radius of a city block. People strenuously objected to having their chinaware rattle, their furniture shiver, and the plaster in their homes crack.” Neighbors raised $10,000 and purchased the property in 1890. Wheeling Electrical moved to Thirty-sixth and McColloch Streets, where it remained for many years.

Despite Wheeling Electrical’s growing success, it would take another decade before the city itself embraced electricity fully, and it took an act of the state legislature, which required that the city purchase the Wheeling Electrical Company. The city rejected this order and built its own power plant for street lighting only. Finally, after many delays electric streetlights shined on the City of Wheeling for the first time on April 23, 1892. An article in the Daily Intelligencer two days later declared that “Wheeling is splendidly illuminated.” Even the Suspension Bridge glowed under bright white beams.

By 1900 Wheeling Electrical (now Wheeling Electric) supplied power to just over 500 customers and had started purchasing other electric companies. In the decade that followed, the invention of new ways of using coal in the production of electricity would change the face of Wheeling Electric and expand the reach of the area’s power capabilities.

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“The Granddaddy of All Power Plants”

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While other power plants existed in places like nearby Bellaire, Ohio and Moundsville, West Virginia, Wheeling’s demand for power increased tremendously in the years leading up to World War I. Big cities like Chicago and New York required more power than their own plants could deliver as well; therefore, solutions were needed to provide large quantities of electricity over long distances.

To help meet this need, two companies—American Gas and Electric and Penn Power Company—joined forces to create one of the most powerful electric plants in the country. In 1915 ground was broken for the Windsor Power Plant ten miles north of Wheeling near the mouth of the Windsor Coal Mine. It was the largest plant of its kind and the first to be shared equally (with liabilities and profits) by two different companies.

The Windsor Power Plant was extraordinary for other reasons as well, but mostly because of its sheer production capabilities. According to American Electric Power (the result of AGE merging with other power companies), “Each turbine generator had a 30,000-kilowatt capacity, making for a facility with a record-breaking total capacity of 180,000 kilowatts. That was more than five times the capacity of the world’s largest plant at that time, which had a capacity of just 35,000 kilowatts.”

In addition, the Windsor Power Plant played a major role in America’s victory in the first World War. Thanks to innovations achieved by plant engineers, electricity was transmitted to Canton, Ohio (nearly 100 miles away). More than 90% of Canton’s industries were put into service producing war-time products, which were all made possible by the Windsor Power Plant workers and the coal miners who supplied them with the coal needed to make electricity. According to the plant’s first manager, E. H. McFarland, during the height of its production, the plant’s transmission lines were hauling the energy equivalent of 500 to 700 railroad cars of coal.

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The Village of Power

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In 1917 neither coal mines nor power plants relied on machines in the way they do now, so a large human workforce was necessary to literally keep the lights on. While the Windsor Power Plant was being built, makeshift housing was constructed for workers in the form of a clubhouse. Later, this structure would become the community center, which would house the library, a Victrola, a pool table, and a dining room. As the demands for electricity increased, so did the need for more housing.

According to a brief history of Power by American Electric Power, limits on available housing in the area around the Windsor Power Plant forced the company to purchase the entire town of nearby Nitro, West Virginia and move it to what became the village of Power. “Hundreds of splendid homes” were added in the 1920s when the plant expanded to become the largest power plant in the world. In addition to single family houses, which workers rented from $25 to $55 a month depending on size, the company provided utilities and water from the factory’s wells. Residents worked together to establish a volunteer fire department and to form a women’s club and other social groups that organized community events. The village also boasted a bowling alley, tennis courts, a restaurant, doctor’s offices, and a barbershop. Workers and their families shopped at Wickham’s, a general store where purchases could be made on company credit.

When the village established its post office, paperwork was filed with the United States government. In an August 10, 1967 article celebrating the plant’s 50th Anniversary, Wheeling Intelligencer’s staff writer, Thais Blatnik, explains that the United States Postal Service selected “Power” from a list of the three names submitted. Since Windsor, West Virginia already existed and the local name, “Bee Bot” (short for Beech Bottom), was rejected, the postal service chose Power as the official name for the company town.

At the height of its operations, Windsor Power employed 330 workers. The vast majority of those workers and their families lived in Power, which had a streetcar that shuttled people from one end of town to the other and to the plant. The streetcars dictated a great deal about life in the village, including providing residents with an identity, such as Stop 40 or Stop 36. Obituaries for Power residents, for example, list their stops as their addresses.

On any given summer evening in 1922, for example, children played ball in the streets and hide-and-seek in the dark between neighbor’s houses while their dad’s bowled and their mothers planned community events. On one Monday night in March, some of them might have attended a dance Community Stop 44, where “the Community Hall was trimmed in black and white and with skulls and crossbones” and the Bellaire Orchestra played. Or maybe on a Wednesday afternoon in November, women would stop at Wickham’s for some onions and a bag of potatoes for that evening’s dinner. And perhaps later that evening some workers from the night shift at the plant would drop by Humphrey Brothers Store and Restaurant (open 6 am to 11 pm) for a bite to eat.

Like in the rest of country, baseball was an incredibly popular past time in Power. Teams of workers played against other men from around the Ohio Valley, including Wheeling, Philo, and Canton, at Plummer’s Field. These company teams reinforced comradery and encouraged healthy competition. Ron Marshall, who worked at the Windsor Power Plant for a decade, said, “Baseball was the real thing. It was rumored — but also true to a great extent — that ability as a baseball player determined employment of new applicants.”

By most accounts of surviving Power residents, life in in the village was filled with hard work, devoted neighbors, and good times. Former resident John Hoppers describes life growing up in pre-World War II power as idyllic. Children played in the streets until dusk. Teens danced at the community center on Saturday nights. Adults hosted picnics and backyard parties on Sunday afternoons. Hoppers notes, “Power was important to me because it was my formative years and where I made many good friendships.”

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Pulling the Plug

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The Windsor Power Plant closed its doors in 1973 after its production methods became outdated and inefficient. Then, in May 1977 the Windsor Power Plant, the one-time record-setting electricity giant, had its first date with the wrecking ball; a process that would continue over the next year and a half. The company-owned houses and other buildings in the village of Power were razed, too, which removed all possibility of former residents from paying a visit to their old stomping grounds. The people of Power can never go home again. As Hoppers said, “I was shocked in the early eighties when I had a case in Steubenville and drove up Rt 2 to find there was no trace of the village. Strange feeling! I felt an empty feeling.”

A core group of about twenty people who grew up in Power worked together with leaders in the city of Beech Bottom and representatives from First Energy Corporation (which owns the land where Power used to stand) to honor their long-ago hometown. In 2017, the 100th anniversary of the founding of Power, former resident Susan Cunningham and other volunteers secured approval from the West Virginia Department of Highways to construct a roadside historical marker alongside Route 2.

In the spring of 2020 the volunteers cleared the land and recreated a veteran’s memorial using a plaque a former resident had salvaged from a building in Power and bricks from buried village streets. “When we were drilling to set the flagpole, we struck the original foundation of the village post office, near where the store and restaurant were, right in the center of town,” Cunningham said. “And I knew we were home.”

The dedication of the small park in August 2020 was attended by former Power residents, including Hoppers and Cunningham, and officials from across the Ohio Valley. Jack Ernest, Marine Corps veteran and self-described “Power Kid,” gave the keynote address: “I enjoyed a childhood that was second to none. Unless you were a part of it, you just can’t imagine how great it was. If you were a Power Kid, you had something so very special. It will never be replicated.”

Unlike other rustbelt towns that suffered slow, sad declines as manufacturing jobs moved across the country and around the globe, the village of Power seemed to evaporate, leaving in its wake untainted memories of unforgettable childhoods and neighbors who were like family. Let it be, then, that rose-colored glow of a community which existed for sixty years on the banks of the Ohio rather than be dimmed by the grinding maw of capitalism’s indifferent hunger.

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Sources

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American Electric Power: Boundless Energy, Past, Present, and Future. 2018. https://www.aep.com/Assets/docs/about/AEPHistoryBook-BoundlessEnergy.pdf

Blatnik, T. “Electricity-Producing Station in Brooke Notes Super-Power’s 50th Anniversary,”
Wheeling Intelligencer, Aug. 10, 1967.

Brooke County, West Virginia Genealogy. “Power.” https://brookecountywvgenealogy.org/power.html

Brown, J. “Museum Given Windsor Memorials,” Wheeling Intelligencer, February 1, 1975.

Conn, A. “Have You Heard of this Long-Lost West Virginia Village?” WTOV9 broadcast. Dec.
4, 2019. https://wtov9.com/news/local/have-you-heard-of-this-long-lost-west-virginia-
village

“For Sale,” Wheeling Intelligencer, June 7, 1974.

“Great Industrial Possibilities for Wheeling District Pictured,” Wheeling Intelligencer, June 9,
1919.

Hoppers, J. E-mail interview. Oct. 8, 2020.

Kleinerman, E.J. “Historic Power Plant Bows to Wrecking Ball,” Wheeling Intelligencer, July 4, 1977.

“Largest Electric Power Plant in the World When Addition is Added to Big Beech Bottom Plant,”
Wheeling Intelligencer, March 23, 1920.

Linder, T. “Brooke’s Sylvia Benzo Retiring After 48 Years as the County’s Clerk,” Weirton
Daily Times, Mar. 20, 2019.

Scott, W. “New Brooke County Park Honors Former Village of Power,” The Intelligencer, Aug.
18, 2020. https://www.theintelligencer.net/news/community/2020/08/new-brooke-
county-park-honors-former-village-of-power/

Porter, C. “Sixty Three Years of Progress, 1882-1945: Wheeling Electric Company,” 1945.
OCPL Archives.

“Power to the People,” First Energy Today, Oct. 08, 2020. FirstEnergy-Today-Power-to-the-
People.pdf

“Power, W. Va.,” The Daily Intelligencer, Mar. 25, 1922.

“S. Sgt. Lizon Able Crewman,” Wheeling Intelligencer, Feb. 14, 1945.

“The Wheeling Electricity Company — And 46 Years of Service to the Community,” Wheeling
Intelligencer, Oct. 30, 1928.

“Windsor Power Plant to Get 60,000 Kilowat Steam Generating Addition,” Wheeling
Intelligencer, Nov. 28, 1939.

“Windsor Tennis Club Sponsors Big Doubles Tourney Starting Tuesday,” Wheeling Intelligencer,
September 14, 1931.

“Windsors Claim Valley Title,” Wheeling Intelligencer, October 1, 1928.