SCOUTING YESTERDAY | Electricity brings excitement, costs to South Dakota towns
This week in South Dakota history: June 21-27
Brookings was among the ranks of South Dakota communities embracing the electric light 125 years ago.
According to the June 22, 1899, edition of The Brookings Register, the town was upgrading its municipal power plant’s capabilities with a new “three wire system” dynamo with the capacity to provide direct current power supply to up to 650 lights.
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Brookings, six years earlier, had shifted from sourcing power from a private provider to a city-owned power plant, a move many towns throughout the state were considering at the time, according to the Sully County Watchman. But taking over their own power supply was a gamble on a risky business at the time. As the paper reported, of the 84 power companies operating in the state in 1893, only 16 were producing a profit for their investors.
Sioux Falls, the first town in the state with electric lighting, had already had second thoughts about going to the new source of power, according to the Argus Leader. The City Council in 1886 opted to go back to gas lights after learning it would cost $15 per light each year to continue powering them with electricity.
The backslide was not uncommon at the time, a move even major world cities like Paris had undertaken.
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