Alabama Power celebrates 110 years in 2016
1925 Alabama Power building drawing
Alabama and the nation have undergone extraordinary change since Dec. 4, 1906, the day William Patrick Lay incorporated the Alabama Power Company in Gadsden.
As the 19th century turned in to 20th, Alabama remained an agricultural state. Most houses were lighted by candles, kerosene or gas lamps. Many folks went to bed when it got dark. A few industries and towns had dynamos that provided streetlights and limited electricity.
Montgomery and Birmingham had electric streetcars. But a few Alabama dreamers had a vision of turning the state’s river rapids and shoals, which for decades had blocked river boats, into sites for hydroelectric dams.
Lay’s dream was to build a dam near the Army Corps of Engineers’ proposed Lock 12, on the Coosa River northeast of Clanton. In 1907, Lay obtained congressional approval to build the dam; it was signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt in March of that year. Lay cleared the site and had plans and engineering studies made.
But like others with similar dreams of developing the hydro potential of Alabama’s rivers, he could find no investment capital in the state, nor could he interest Wall Street in the risky venture.
In 1911, James Mitchell, a Massachusetts engineer who had spent 17 years bringing electricity to Brazil, came to see another Alabama dam site at Cherokee Bluffs (now Martin Dam) on the Tallapoosa River.
He made contact with Montgomery attorney Thomas W. Martin, who was familiar with the state’s dam laws and was a small stockholder in the company that owned the Cherokee Bluffs site.
Mitchell had connections with a London investment firm, which provided the money for him to acquire ownership in a number of companies that had been formed to build dams, but that had failed to raise any capital. Among those was Lay’s Alabama Power Company.
On May 1, 1912, Lay transferred ownership of his company to James Mitchell and his associates, saying, “I now commit to you the good name and destiny of Alabama Power Company. May it be developed for the service of Alabama.”
Lay may have lost his company, but his dream became a reality. In 1914, Alabama Power completed work on its first hydroelectric dam, at the Lock 12 site.
Fifteen years later, on a cold November day in 1929, with the Goodyear blimp circling overhead, members of Alabama Power’s board of directors and other dignitaries gathered at the site to carry out the board’s recent resolution: to rename the Lock 12 Dam in honor of Lay, and his service to the company and to the public.
Today, some 110 years after Alabama Power’s incorporation, many things have changed in the state.
But the company Lay founded is still here and still focused on serving the people of Alabama.
