History
The history of the Croton dam is intertwined with the history of William A. Foote (1863–1923) and James B. Foote (1868-?), brothers from Adrian, Michigan, with a burgeoning electric power empire, along with William G. Fargo, a Jackson-based civil engineer who designed similar hydroelectric plants throughout the Midwest.
William A. Foote was a 20-year-old grist mill operator in Adrian, Michigan, in 1884 when, in what was then a common occurrence, he provided space and shaft power from his mill wheel to Thomson - Houston, a local electric utility startup, to light 12 streetlights. Fascinated by the potential, within a year he enlisted his then 17-year-old brother James and moved to Jackson, Michigan, and in 1886 they jointly founded Jackson Electric Light Works (a predecessor company to Consumers Energy), which began by lighting downtown Jackson electrically. The Foote brothers set up similar city specific companies in Battle Creek and Adrian within a few years. In many cases dams already built for grist mills, sawmills and the like were refit for electric generators, but in some cases, new dams were constructed. As the familiarity with the technology, and the technology itself, improved, the scope of projects became more ambitious.
Read more about this topic: Croton Dam (Michigan)
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