A Grand Scheme on the Grand River: Fairwater's Fifty-Foot Waterwheel
by Andy Trewyn
Fifty-Foot Overshot Waterwheel, Fairwater, Wisconsin
Quietly rusting away in the woods near Fairwater, Wisconsin, stands the nation’s largest overshot waterwheel. 1 The waterwheel’s dimensions are impressive: it is 50 feet high, ten feet wide, and it weighs 29 tons. The largest wheel ever produced by the Fitz Waterwheel Company, it is one of the most powerful waterwheels ever made. 2 Installed by Jess Laper in 1925 on the Grand River in Fairwater, Wisconsin, the wheel was once used to produce electricity to power three communities. The huge wheel stands idle today, a reminder of a different time–a boom time, the 1920s–when electricity was a brand-new industry, and a forward-looking thinker might seek to make a fortune playing a hunch. Fairwater’s waterwheel is the story of one man’s pursuit of a dream. Jess Laper’s determination and commitment to this new industry culminated in the construction of a record-sized waterwheel, one that, sadly, operated for only a short time.
How did Fairwater end up with the nation’s largest waterwheel? The geography of the area seems unremarkable. The visitor does not encounter dazzling waterfalls or whitewater rivers, the kinds of features one might expect to spawn a record-sized waterwheel, in this part of central Wisconsin. Examination of the historical evidence suggests that several contributing factors led to the construction of this wheel. One was the personality of Jess Laper. Another was the geography of his dam site. Finally, there was a phenomenon called “hydromania,” the dam-building craze that gained a grip on the nation, and especially Wisconsin, at this time. 3
The story of Jess Laper and his gigantic waterwheel really began with Thomas Edison. Working in his New Jersey laboratory, the “Wizard of Menlo Park” and his assistants developed a practical electric light bulb in 1879. 4 At thirty years of age, Edison already had several patents to his credit, and a number of them, including the multiplex telegraph machine and stock ticker, were related to the field of electricity. Thus, it came as no surprise when he directed his attention toward electric lighting. But it is somewhat surprising that he would turn to incandescent lighting when arc lighting, at this time, was more advanced. 5
The reason Edison developed the incandescent bulb was that he was as astute a marketer as he was an inventor. He knew that arc lightning was by its nature restricted to large-space applications like streetlights. However, Edison had done his homework. By studying gas lighting companies’ records, Edison found that 90% of their revenues came from residential and office lighting. This interior lighting was the market he pursued.
To effect his purpose, he avidly studied gas company generation, distribution, financing, pricing, and marketing. Everything about the electric system he designed, even the size of the lamps, was patterned on the experience of the gas companies. 6
Edison had not only invented the incandescent bulb, but also the distribution system to feed it. Gearing up for a residential lighting market, as Edison did, created a model that small-scale utility pioneers like Jess Laper would later follow.
Edison began the operation of the world’s first central electric generating station, the Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan, in September 1882. Even the location of his test plant was carefully chosen by Edison with marketing in mind. The plant served the area that “included the leading financial houses, and Edison was thoroughly aware of the importance of convincing bankers of the commercial worth of his product.” 7
Edison’s concept arrived in Wisconsin just three weeks later, when the world’s first hydroelectric generating plant commenced operations in Appleton. 8 Under a license from the Edison Electric Light Company, the plant began to deliver 12.5 kilowatts of power to local customers. 9 H. J. Rogers was the man who built Appleton’s hydroelectric plant. Rodgers was already using waterpower in his paper manufacturing plant. In his urgency to get the plant operating as quickly as possible, Rogers omitted several of the safety and reliability features of the earlier Edison plant, and as a result, he soon encountered technical difficulties. “The water wheels that turned the generator were connected to pulp beating machines, the speed of which varied greatly. Sometimes the voltage was so high that all the lamps in the system burned out, and since lamps cost $1.60 each, this was an expensive fault.” 10 One can imagine the rising dismay felt by early power customers as yet another brownout occurred during the peak pulping times. Before long, however, the power supply became somewhat more reliable when the company erected a separate powerhouse where a technician regulated the flow of current. The operator still had to judge the intensity of the light merely using his eyes, because measuring instruments had yet to be developed. For all of its shortcomings, however, “the electric light was popularly judged a success, for although it often did not work, it was beautiful and it was novel.” 11 The seed of “hydromania” had been sown in Wisconsin’s fertile soil.
Following the successful harnessing of the Niagara Falls for electric power production in 1904, the seed germinated. Forrest McDonald first identified the phenomenon of “hydromania” and he explained the effect the Niagara Falls project had on the nation:
The achievement had about it a multitude of features that stimulated the popular imagination. Simply because it was at the massive and beautiful Niagara Falls, perhaps the best known falls in the world, the project was followed closely by the public. It was widely publicized for a decade, and Sunday supplement writers pictured the completion of the project as the dawn of a new era of free power. The size of the investment, the immediate financial success, and the magic name of J. Pierpont Morgan translated the free-power notion in the minds of many into a belief that any enterprising entrepreneur could emulate the project on a smaller scale. 12
Unfortunately, the Niagara Falls project had some key advantages not shared by most of the Wisconsin hydro projects that soon followed. One factor was that there were customers in the electrochemical industry near the Niagara Falls site who were eager to purchase power. 13 Wisconsin developers, in their rush to harness the power of the state’s rivers, at times overlooked the fact that a good site for a dam might not be near a market for power. Another Niagara factor was the steady, year-round flow of a large volume of water, and a third was the high “head” available at Niagara Falls. “Head” refers to the distance the water drops at a dam site, and it determined, along with the volume of water flowing past the site, the amount of power a site could potentially produce.
Typically, Wisconsin’s rivers did not share the latter two characteristics. Most of the state’s waterways, especially the westward flowing rivers, like the Grand River, provide “low-head” sites. 14 And, as a rule, Wisconsin’s waterways have a wide annual variance in volume of flow. Because of the state’s northerly climate, the low-water season comes in the winter, when the headwaters are frozen, instead of during the summer as in more southerly climes. This was particularly unfortunate for the state’s hydroelectric pioneers. Their market consisted almost solely of commercial and residential lighting customers, whose electrical usage peaked in the winter, when hours of darkness are longer.
Wisconsin was perhaps hit harder by the “delusion of free power,” offered in the form of flowing water, than were other parts of the nation. The state had an extensive history of putting its rivers to work in the lumber industry. Later, water power was used for other mechanical operations, notably flour milling and the Fox Valley’s paper industry. Wisconsin law had encouraged the development of dams for these purposes, and developers were eager to turn their experience to the production of power. Laper’s site on the Grand River in Fond du Lac County had originally been dammed to provide power for a flour mill. 15
The first large-scale manifestation of hydromania in Wisconsin was Magnus Swenson’s project at Kilbourn, now known as the Wisconsin Dells. The Wisconsin River, which would earn the title of “the hardest working river in the nation,” appeared a good spot for a hydro-electric project at Kilbourn. There, the river is narrow, with solid, high, stone banks. The site, however, provided only a 22-foot head, and as experience would later show, the unit cost of developing these low-head sites was enormous, because the potential power yield was relatively low. 16
Swenson had paid so much for the land and water rights at Kilbourn that the project was doomed from the start. At a purchase price of $1.5 million, and with a plant that was originally capable of producing 6,000 kilowatts of electricity, the cost for just the site and water rights at Kilbourn was more than $250 per kilowatt, or more than twice the cost of the completed plant at Niagara Falls. 17
Swenson built the project almost entirely on speculation, assuming he could readily sell power to customers in Madison through the Madison Gas and Electric Company (MG&E). But as construction neared completion, it became apparent that MG&E would not be interested in purchasing the power from Kilbourn, since they were already inexpensively generating as much power as they needed. The president of The Milwaukee Electric Railroad and Light Company, John I. Beggs, realized that he was the only customer willing to buy power from Swenson, and having him thus cornered, got it for almost nothing. “Beggs’ terms gave the company enough to stay out of receivership, and no more.” 18 The 30-year contract signed by Beggs and Swenson would pay $15,000 per month for the entire production capacity of the Kilbourn plant. At this rate, the company could pay little more than the interest on its outstanding debt. Once stock-holders got wind of the deal and realized that the stock would be virtually worthless for 30 years, the price of stock fell dramatically. In 1916, Beggs bought up the stock for a song, paid himself a large salary as “president, treasurer, and secretary of the company, and sold the company a year later for a profit.” 19
Although the Kilbourn project was a technological breakthrough, and in later years became an important power producer for Wisconsin Power and Light, at the time it was an economic disaster. Ironically, this did not dampen the spirit of Wisconsin’s hydroelectric pioneers; it seemed to have the opposite effect, fueling hydromania all the more.
It is likely that this hydroelectric fever, “the delusion of free power,” is partly what drove Jess Laper to squeeze every last possible kilowatt from the small flowage that crossed his site, which is really what building the fifty-foot wheel allowed him to do. 20
Laper’s personality also contributed to the development of his dam site. Laper was an entrepreneur who was involved in a variety of enterprises. His parents, John and Mary Laper, were influential people in Fairwater who owned considerable property in the area, and it was John Laper who traded twenty horses for the mill site where Jess built his power plant. Even more influential were the parents of the woman Jess Laper married, Nellie Abercrombie. Her father had been Fairwater’s first village president. 21 Having such influential family ties undoubt-edly helped Laper secure financial backing for his business ventures.
Jess and Nellie Laper were regarded by the local newspaper, The Brandon Times, as socialites. Their names appeared frequently in the social column of the paper, which recounted the lifestyle of the couple in numerous entries: “J. W. Laper purchased a cottage on Little Green Lake,” and “The Lapers and Cards motored to Indianapolis for the races this weekend.” 22 Still other entries kept the public informed of the whereabouts, activities, and health of the couple. According to Jess Laper’s son Florian, who now lives in Ripon, another reason for his father’s social visibility stemmed directly from his electrical business. Jess Laper personally visited everyone in town on a monthly basis for the purpose of reading their meters. 23
Laper was an habitual entrepreneur. Besides the power company, he was involved in several other enterprises. One was an automobile agency, established in 1916. 24Like electricity, the automobile industry was relatively new. Both businesses were on the cutting edge of early twentieth-century technology. Laper also operated a dance pavilion near the site of the water-wheel. Each week from Memorial Day through Labor Day, a dance would be held at the large 60- by 90-foot pavilion. Actor Spencer Tracey, then a Ripon College student, attended some of these dances. “He was one of the rowdy ones,” later remembered Florian Laper, who was twelve at the time. 25 Other Laper business ventures at the time included a feed mill and several farms.
But the electric business was Laper’s mainstay. He first dabbled in the production of electricity through the use of wind power, and according to Florian Laper, designed and sold some wind-powered generating plants. 26 But once Laper owned a dam and water rights, it was logical that he would turn them toward the production of electricity, especially since the industry leaders viewed water as the future source of power for generating electricity.
The mill site which Laper owned had originally been developed by the “firm of Dakin and Lathrop [who] erected a flour mill on the Grand River in 1847.” The town essentially grew up around the mill, with a store and a sawmill commencing operations in the same year. 27
Laper founded his power company on the mill site in 1912. The Brandon Times noted progress on the plant on July 11, 1912, “J. W. Laper is putting up the telegraph poles this week-end, for the electric light system,” and on July 18, 1912, “Mr. Laper is going right on with the light plant and expects to have it ready for lighting in the near future. It will be a fine thing for our town.” The community seemed anxious to step into the age of electric lighting. The plant began to supply electricity on October 22, 1912. 28
Laper originally generated power using the same five-foot waterwheel that had powered the flour mill. In the early days, he supplied the town with thirty-two-volt, direct current power. 29 By producing direct current, he could use the waterwheel during the day to charge a series of batteries. Because lighting was the only use for the power at this time, no current was drawn during the daytime. The current owner, Mrs. Margaret Laper, whose husband was a cousin of Florian Laper, described the procedure for supplying power in those days. At dusk, the power would be turned on. There was a piano located in the electric plant for the entertainment of the attendant. At times, the scene at the plant would become quite merry. At 10:30 or 11:00 p.m., the attendant would blink the power three times, indicating that it would soon be turned off.
The new plant was a success, and almost immediately demand for electricity began to increase. At the same time, Laper was trying to expand his service area to include the towns of Brandon and Alto. Laper soon discovered that the five-foot waterwheel could not produce enough power to meet the growing demand.
In 1914, Laper switched to alternating current. 30 The advantage of alternating current was that it could be produced at very high voltages, for efficient transmission to the outlying towns of Brandon and Alto, and then transformed into usable voltage there. Simultaneously, he attempted to increase the plant’s power output by using diesel power to turn the generator. Two different engines, first a “Ven Severin single cylinder semi-diesel, and then a Fairbanks-Morse two-cylinder diesel,” were tried. 31 Even when the diesel engines were supplemented by the power from the five-foot wheel, the electrical demand could not be met. New labor saving appliances were appearing regularly, and it was inevitable that the demand for power would continue to grow. Clearly, a more powerful source would have to be found.
In 1922, a setback occurred that almost devastated the fledgling utility. February 22, 1922 was a day of infamy in Wisconsin utility history. On this date, a terrible ice storm hit South-central Wisconsin. The storm damage was covered extensively in the Brandon Times.
Between Brandon and Waupun over 50 telephone poles are reported down, and a mile or so of poles are reported laying on the ground west of the village, [the line to the fairwater power plant] and from all reports it will be some time until repairs on the telephone lines and electric wires can be made.
A week later, on March 2, 1922, the Brandon Times described the progress being made at restoring electricity:
About thirty men have been kept busy on the electric system, and equally as many on the telephone systems…but up to going to press with the Times today, we are still without any electric light or telephone service. Damage as nearly as it can be estimated at present will amount to between $6,000 and $7,000. 32
In the Fairwater Department of the same issue of the newspaper was this item:
J. W. Laper has certainly done some tall hustling to get fixed up so we have lights in the dwellings. We surely appreciate this as it is no fun plundering along, by candle light, when you are used to electricity.
The tone of the articles indicates that people could hardly stand the inconvenience of a power outage. Such a response demonstrates the tremendous impact electricity had, because only ten years had passed since Laper started operating his plant, and Brandon had only been electrified for eight years.
Restoration of power was difficult because the ground was frozen, and new poles could not be set until the spring thaw. But the resourceful Laper rounded up two-by-fours and two-by-sixes and bolted them to pole stumps and fence posts to suspend the lines temporarily. Thus his business continued with only a minor interruption. 33
During this period, Laper was still wrestling with the problem of how to get more power production out of his plant. Essentially, his present hydroelectric arrangement had two limi-tations. One was the insufficient, six-foot head provided by his dam, and the other was the insufficient volume of water flowing in the Grand River at his site. There was nothing Laper could do, save praying for rain, to increase the amount of water flowing in the river. With a capital investment, however, he could increase the head, and thus utilize a larger waterwheel to produce more power.
In 1921, Laper decided to go ahead with the fifty-foot waterwheel, encouraged by a Fairwater village improvement. “The Fairwater village board approved the installation of 25 street lights, 100 watt, at a flat rate of $20 per light per year. They were lit from dusk to 11:30 p.m.” 34 The promise of steady revenue and increased power consumption prompted Laper to go ahead with his plan.
The decision to build the fifty-foot waterwheel represented an incredible investment of money, time, and effort. First of all, Laper had to provide sufficient head for the waterwheel. In order to establish this, the waterwheel had to be built a distance of some fifteen hundred feet downstream from the millpond and dam. At this point, there would be a fifty-foot drop from the surface of the millpond to the top to the tail race, where the water flowed away. This was the amount of head required to utilize a fifty-foot waterwheel.
A flume was required to get the water from the millpond to the wheel, and building the fifteen-hundred-foot pipeline from the dam to the waterwheel was a major construction effort in and of itself. The pipe had a three-foot inside diameter. 35 It was constructed by a technique used for wooden silos of the day. Tongue-and-groove lumber staves were bound with iron hoops, which were spaced one foot apart. 36The construction technique is not unlike that of a wooden barrel.
Florian Laper recalled a brief period in the construction when the wooden flume was completed, but not yet in use.
Parts of the wooden flume were suspended above ground on a trestle. A merry-go-round and dance pavilion on a wooded site near the location of the waterwheel was a favorite spot for social gatherings. I was one of the young boys who accepted a challenge to crawl through the one-half mile of pipe. It was pitch black in the wooden pipe, and I wanted to turn back, but with two companies close behind, there was no way to get out of that dungeon except by keeping crawling straight ahead. 37
When the flume was completed, there was only a one-foot drop from the surface of the water in the millpond to the top of the waterwheel, yet the flume delivered the pond’s water to the wheel at the impressive rate of 1,000 cubic feet per minute. 38
In order to make a fairly straight shot from the millpond to the waterwheel site, part of the conduit had to be suspended on a trestle. In some places the pipeline was eight to ten feet above the ground. In other areas, excavation was necessary to clear a path for the line, and it was accomplished through the use of horse-power and a steam dragline. 39 The dragline was shipped to Fairwater by rail for the operation. The Brandon Times noted its arrival without fanfare in the October 16, 1924 edition with a one-line blurb, “Dragline unloaded in Fairwater for electric company dredging.” The trestle and the excavations both added to the cost and complexity of building the flume.
By placing his waterwheel 1,500 feet downstream from the dam, Laper gained the additional head he needed to increase his power production. The problem of insufficient water volume still remained, and since Laper could not change this, his challenge was to utilize the water he did have as efficiently as possible. Laper’s solution was to use the waterwheel instead of some sort of turbine apparatus, because the waterwheel would use the small volume of water at utmost efficiency.
Laper’s waterwheel was designed and built by the Fitz Waterwheel Company of Hanover, Pennsylvania. 40 Parts of the wheel were built in Pennsylvania and shipped disassem-bled via railroad to Fairwater. The Brandon Times noted its arrival matter-of-factly in the April 9, 1925 edition, “The water wheel for the new plant at the Electric Co. had been unloaded from the car on track here and is being installed in the new plant here, which is nearing completion.”
Before assembly could occur, the immense foundation for the wheel had to be placed. Building it was another major undertaking. The construction of the two-foot-thick concrete walls that supported the weight of the wheel involved the placement of a great deal of concrete. Conservatively estimated, the foundation contains several hundred cubic yards of concrete.
The waterwheel, because of its great weight and size, had to be assembled at the site. It was put together with hot rivets. Florian Laper was impressed with the construction technique. He remembered “watching a man heat a metal rivet with a forge, grab it with a tong [sic] and throw it 50 feet up to another man who would catch it with a tong, place it in a hole, and bind it together using a hammer.” 41 At least one worker was injured during this process. The incident was tersely reported in the Brandon Times on April 21, 1925: “E. C. Fenske had the misfortune to fall from a scaffold at the electric plant last week which resulted in a badly bruised foot so he is unable to be around.”
During the summer of 1925 the big wheel was finally completed. When the wheel was finished, it “was so well balanced, it could be turned by the pressure of a garden hose.” 42 When operating at capacity, it produced about 140 horsepower. 43 The wheel turned at a very slow rate to conserve the limited water available in the millpond. In operation, the wheel turned two-and-a-half revolutions per minute. Jess Laper elaborated on this. “If you looked at the wheel when it was in operation, it barely moved, for its top speed was only two and a half turns a minute. Yet if you looked at the surface over which the water flowed, it traveled so fast it was a blur–almost seven feet a second.” 44
The wheel was connected to the generator by a series of huge gears. By the time the rotation of the wheel reached the generator, it was converted from two-and-a-half revolutions per minute to twelve thousand revolutions per minute. The generator that the wheel turned at this rate produced about 75 kilowatts of electricity. 45
While operating, tremendous forces were exerted on the components of the wheel. For example, seven tons of water were suspended on the face of the wheel. This meant that in addition to the 29-ton dry weight of the wheel, seven more tons were suspended on the nine-inch diameter axle that supported the works. “The weight of the water put a pressure of more than 40 tons on the gear teeth that had to speed up the generator to produce the quantity of electricity needed to supply the consumers.” 46
The construction of the fifty-foot waterwheel required a considerable capital investment. Florian Laper estimated that the construction and installation of the waterwheel itself and the building that housed it cost $10,000. 47 Laper also had a considerable sum invested in a distri-bution network that now extended to Fairwater and the Villages of Brandon and Alto. Even though the project was expensive, it still had the potential to be profitable. Laper’s waterwheel was capable of producing approximately seventy-five kilowatts of electricity. If he could operate the wheel an average of ten hours per day, a total of 750 kilowatt-hours would be available for daily customer use. Since Laper charged sixteen cents per kilowatt-hour, the potential revenues amounted to $120 per day, or $3,600 per month. Obviously, the operation could have returned a handsome profit on the money invested.
Sadly, as often seemed to be the case for Wisconsin’s hydroelectric pioneers, things were not quite that simple. The gears and shaft of the fifty-foot wheel simply could not take the strain that was exerted upon them. In winter, problems were compounded when spray from the water froze onto the working parts of the wheel, adding still more weight. After just six months of operation, disaster struck. Florian Laper relates the story.
One night, Dad was up on the ladder, oiling the first set of gears. Just as he was doing so, he saw something drop. One of the cogs of a pinion which operated against the largest gear had broken off, and so Jess jumped down eight feet and ran for the shut off chain. 48
In order to keep the flume from bursting, Laper had to shut off the water supply grad-ually. Before the water was completely turned off, the missing cog came around to meet the gear. The large gear split in half and part of it dropped down to the floor. Freed from driving the generator, the wheel began to “spin so fast it became a blur.” Jess Laper said the whole building began to shake, and he was afraid the huge wheel would “come loose of the shaft and spin off into the woods.” 49
A new gear was ordered to repair the wheel. When Laper had it installed, he noticed that the nine-inch diameter, five-ton, steel shaft had become twisted one-eighth turn out of line. A new shaft was sent to the plant, but it was impossible to lift the twenty-nine-ton wheel and sup-port it while a new shaft was installed.50 This event marked the demise of the wheel’s working life. After only six months of operation, it was never used again.
The idea of producing electricity, however, was not abandoned. Laper had only made a $5,000 down payment on the wheel, and he refused to pay the balance of the price until problems with it could be corrected. Apparently, the Fitz Company did not think that the wheel could be fixed either. They eventually replaced it with a twenty-foot turbine that produced as much power as the waterwheel. 51 According to Florian Laper,
There was quite a hassle about this. The wheel was designed wrong and the shaft was made of the wrong kind of steel. They furnished new shafts, but the wheel was so enormous, it was nearly impossible, with the equipment available, to hold the twenty-nine-ton wheel while a ten-ton shaft was being installed. So they dickered back and forth. It never came to a lawsuit or any-thing, but after six months, the company furnished a turbine and the huge wheel was abandoned. 52
During the short time that the wheel operated, Laper sold his distribution rights to the Wisconsin Power and Light Company (WP&L). In this transaction, Laper made a considerable profit. During 1925, Wisconsin Power and Light was in the midst of a large-scale expansion program, buying up small distribution systems, often at inflated prices. 53 In 1925, WP&L acquired three municipal plants and 31 small companies. The trend in the electrical utility industry was toward consolidation, and the sun was setting on small-time operators like Jess Laper. In the land rush to expand their territory from 1917 through 1929, “Power and Light crowded more acquisitions, mergers, and consolidations into a dozen years than a dozen ordinary corporations experience in a century.” 54 By the time he sold out, WP&L already owned the territory surrounding Laper’s service area of Brandon, Fairwater, and Alto. 55
The contract for the sale of Laper’s distribution rights was signed on October 2, 1925, and it specified that Laper would receive “Forty-Two Thousand Dollars, payable in preferred stock of the Wisconsin Power and Light Company at par” in return for his entire distribution system. The contract also specified that Laper would enter employment with WP&L “for a period of seven years to have the supervision” of the distribution system. He was paid $450 per month for this service. 56
Laper retained ownership of the waterwheel and generator, and WP&L agreed to purchase the power he produced for the next twenty years at a rate of two cents per kilowatt hour. Although this was considerably less than Laper had charged his customers, it was closer to what it cost WP&L to produce power. Shortly after buying Laper’s distribution system, WP&L standardized its rates. Each of the many small utilities WP&L had acquired had its own rate schedule, and for the sake of simplicity WP&L made the rate uniform across its entire territory. Because of economy of scale, WP&L was able to reduce the rate considerably from what Laper had charged, $16 for 100 kilowatt-hours, to $5.80 for 100 kilowatt-hours. 57 The power consumers of Brandon, Alto, and Fairwater definitely benefited from the WP&L buyout and rate standardization.
As time wore on, the revenues Laper received from power sales decreased. During the 1930s, the marshes upstream from the Fairwater millpond were drained, and Laper’s water supply became even less reliable. The water came down in the spring faster than it could possibly be used, and after that there wasn’t enough water. 58 As a result, Laper was producing less and less power.
When Laper’s contract expired in 1945, his electric plant had run its course. The wooden flume was dismantled, and its lumber was used to build a barn. The iron hoops were straightened out and used to reinforce concrete. 59 The turbine was sold and shipped to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where there was another site with sufficient head to power it. 60
Jess Laper had filled a small but important niche in the process of bringing electricity to Wisconsin. In 1907, five years before Laper started to produce power, one in twelve Wisconsin homes received electricity from a central generating plant. In the same year, 151 cities and villages in the state had central station service, and of those, only 28 had 24-hour service. Of the 151 central stations in Wisconsin in 1907, 31 were powered exclusively by water. 61 As long as demand for electricity was limited to lighting applications, small operators like Jess Laper could meet their customers’ needs. But by the mid-1920s, as new applications for electricity continued to be found, customer demand outgrew the small operations, and the giant utility companies of today began to take over. But it was the small operators who had given the state its first taste of electricity and created a market for large utilities to serve.
The big waterwheel still stands, much as it did in 1926 when it ceased to operate. Because of Jess Laper’s eye for the future and his interest in electricity, because of the geographical obstacles he had to overcome, and because of “hydromania,” the small town of Fairwater gained a historic landmark. What does the future hold in store for the waterwheel? The Laper family still hopes, as do others, that the site might be restored as a park or historic site. As interest grows in the early industrial history of Wisconsin, perhaps this will occur.
1 - David R. Stidham, “Large Diameter Waterwheels of the U.S.” (March 1985), Unpublished manuscript in the collection of Margaret Laper. Mrs. Laper’s archives, and her hospitality in granting access to them, were essential to the completion of this essay. return
2 - Old Mill News (October, 1984), 12. return
3 - Forrest McDonald, Let There Be Light: The Electric Utility Industry In Wisconsin–1881-1955 (Madison, Wisconsin: The American History Research Center, 1957), 111-112. return
4 - Bill Beck, Transforming the Heartland: The History of Wisconsin Power & Light Company (Madison, Wisconsin: The Wisconsin Power and Light Company, Inc., 1990), 17. return
5 - McDonald, 12. return
6 - Ibid. return
7 - Ibid. return
8 - Beck, 17. return
9 - Beck 17; McDonald, 35. return
10 - McDonald, 35. return
11 - McDonald, 37. return
12 - McDonald, 112-113. return
13 - McDonald, 112. return
14 - McDonald, 114. return
15 - Markesan Herald, n.d. All references to Markesan Herald refer to newspaper clippings in the Laper collection. return
16 - McDonald, 142. return
17 - McDonald, 141-2. Directors meeting, February 1906, minute book, Southern Wisconsin Power Company, WP&L Records Center. return
18 - Beck, 35. return
19 - McDonald, 145. Directors and stockholders meetings, July 1915 to July 30, 1917, Southern Wisconsin Power Co. return
20 - McDonald, 111. return
21 - Markesan Herald, n.d. return
22 - Brandon Times, July 9, 1924; May 28, 1925. return
23 - Florian Laper Interview, September 1995. return
24 - Markesan Herald, n.d. return
25 - Oshkosh (Wisconsin) Northwestern, July 7, 1990. return
26 - Florian Laper Interview, September 1995. return
27 - Markesan Herald, n.d.. return
28 - Paula Delfeld, Appleton Post-Crescent, n.d. Citations of Delfeld refer to a newspaper clipping, ca 1968-70. return
29 - Florian Laper Interview, September 1995. return
30 - Milwaukee Sentinel, March 13, 1955. return
31 - Delfeld. return
32 - Brandon Times, March 2, 1922. return
33 - Margaret Laper Interview, November 1994. return
34 - Markesan Herald, n.d. return
35 - Milwaukee Sentinel, March 13, 1955. return
36 - Delfeld. return
37 - Elaine Reetz, Come Back in Time, v. II: Business and Commerce (Princeton, Wisconsin: Fox River Publishing Co., 1982). 83-86. return
38 - Milwaukee Sentinel, March 13, 1955. return
39 - Oshkosh Northwestern, July 7, 1990. return
40 - Old Mill News (October 1984). return
41 - Oshkosh Northwestern, July 7, 1990. return
42 - Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, September 10, 1974. return
43 - Stidham. return
44 - Milwaukee Sentinel, March 13, 1955. return
45 - Reetz, 84; Old Mill News (October 1984); Florian Laper Interview, September 1995. return
46 - Milwaukee Sentinel, March 13, 1955. return
47 - Reetz, 83. return
48 - Oshkosh Northwestern, July 7, 1990. return
49 - Oshkosh Daily Northwestern, September 10, 1974. return
50 - Ibid. return
51- Oshkosh Northwestern, July 7, 1990. return
52 - Delfeld. return
53 - Lamont K. Richardson, Wisconsin R.E.A.: The Struggle to Extend Electricity to Rural Wisconsin, 1933-1955 (Madison: U. W. Experiment Station, College of Agriculture, 1961), 9; McDonald, 223. return
54 - McDonald, 232, 239. return
55 - Brandon Times, October 8, 1925. return
56 - Contract between J. W. Laper and WP&L signed October 2, 1925, Wisconsin Power and Light Company, Records Department. return
57 - Bills Ledger of Fairwater Electric Co. WP&L Records Center; McDonald, 241. return
58 - Florian Laper Interview, September 1995. return
59 - Milwaukee Sentinel, March 13, 1955. return
60 - Oshkosh Northwestern, July 7, 1990. return
61 - McDonald, 98, 100. return
Copyright 2002 by Clarence B. Davis. All Rights Reserved. Printed by Action Printing, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
Electronic publication by Fond du Lac Public Library has been approved by Clarence B. Davis.
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