Dam Crazy for White Coal in the New South - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 22

the Savannah River valley. Numerous companies—including the independent Tennessee
River Power, Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Duke Power, and other smaller compan-
ies—planned and developed multiple-dam and sometimes multiple-purpose projects across
the region to redirect river energy to factory hands and machines. “Water power,” Rupert
Vance declared in Human Geography , was “the one unifying force underlaying industrial
development” in the southern Piedmont. 3 Vance observed this development through North
Carolina's James B. Duke (1856-1925), and Duke Power Company was among the first
and most successful corporate enterprises to couple waterpower and industrial develop-
ment. Dr. Walker Gill Wylie (1849-1923), a South Carolina native, New York City phys-
ician, president of the Catawba Power Company, and Whitner's former business partner,
presented the self-made American Tobacco Company king with the idea of developing a
series of hydroelectric dams and reservoirs on the Catawba River. 4 Together, Wylie and
Duke tapped William States Lee (1872-1934), a Citadel graduate and engineer who had
previously worked alongside Whitner at Portman Shoals and who had completed Wylie's
Rock Hill (S.C.) Catawba Power Company hydroelectric project in 1904, to provide the
technical know-how. 5 Not unlike other company founders who merged technical skill, river
knowledge, and financial resources, the Duke trio started building a system in 1905 and
within six years had linked four hydroelectric plants (three on the Catawba River) and two
auxiliary coal-fired steam plants in the Carolina's Piedmont. 6 By then, Duke Power Com-
pany's Catawba (Lake Wylie) and Great Falls projects stored water behind dams before
turning falling river water into energy for distribution over 700 miles of transmission lines
to reach more than 100 cotton mills. 7