Trouble and struggle seem to have been the history of Brainerd's water and light systems up to 1908, when the City Council, under the newly-established Home Rule charter, took matters into its own hands.
As to water, early in 1881, when the city population was a little over the 1,000 mark, the first city council ordered three wells dug into the sand, in places where the density of the populations made them most useful. Residents carried their supplies of water home in buckets. In February, 1882, however, a good Minnesota freeze rendered the wells useless. Something had to be done.
CHARLES F. KINDRED and several of the companies he organized in his 15 years in Brainerd set out to do that something. Kindred organized Brainerd Water and Power company, which concentrated on water service, and Brainerd Light and Power company, which had both gas and electric lighting franchises.
A third company of his, Mississippi Water Power and Boom company, built the dam which generated the electricity, aided by $30,000 in city bonds, which were voted primarily to build a bridge over the dam.
On March 19,1888, Mayor Werner Hempstead addressed the city council to announce the completion of the dam. Initial expenditure was $25,000.
KINDRED LEFT Brainerd in 1889, financially ruined, and his water company went into receivership. Ambrose Tighe was first-receiver, of what came to be known as Minnesota Water Works Company. First James M. Elder, and then Judd Wright was manager.
But whatever the name of the company or the man in charge, water service was always poor, and the quality of the water was poor.
Finally in 1907, the council began action to condemn the plant and buy it.
MEANWHILE electricity was making just as many problems. After Kindred left, the Common Council for 20 years ran its own plant, with Win. M. Dresskell, local jeweler and band leader, as first superintendent. Power was secured from the east end of Kindred's dam, owned successively by Northern Water Power company and Northwest Paper Company.
In 1892 the city bought the land the electric plant stood on for $2,000.
Beginning in 1893, Brainerd went on the moonlight schedule of street lighting, which it used for 30 years. When the almanac said that the moon would shine, the lights would not be turned on, though the sky was heavily clouded.
A TURNING POINT was reached in 1908, when the Home Rule charter was adopted, including a Water and Light board of long tenure to operate those utilities, rather than aldermen who might serve a year or two. First president of the board was M. T. Dunn.
The water situation then was bad. The plant consisted of a small pumping station on the, river flats west of Evergreen cemetery. Surface water was being served to the city, being pumped into the mains, dirt and all, with nothing done to clarify it. The mains were made of thin iron, which rusted easily.
AMONG FIRST ACTIONS of the new board was to condemn the plant, and to gain possession of it for Brainerd at a valuation of $57,500. An immediate change in operation was to introduce chlorine into the waters regularly to make the water safer against typhoid fever.
The result was a taste so unpleasant that those who could afford it purchased other water to drink.
The character and condition of the distributing system went from bad to worse, till in 1915
R. A. Beise, as mayor, directed the council to provide a new water supply. He put P. W. Donovan in charge and supervised drilling for iron ore in the county. As advisers, he appointed W. A. Barrows, D. C. Peacock, and Carl Zapffe.
The group decided at once that a system of deep wells would be the answer.
IN 1916 CARL ZAPFFE became president of the Water and Light Board, and served in that capacity for 17 years. He and his board put the Brainerd water system on its feet. Deep wells were dug so that water was taken from a gravel bed 100 feet below the bottom of the river, near the site of the old brewery in the Boom Lake area. A 750,000 gallon concrete reservoir and a 300,000 gallon concrete water tank held reserve supplies.
Because of its disastrous fires in the past, Brainerd had been threatened with cancellation of insurance. installation of the new system saved it from that disaster.
IMPROVEMENTS still went on. In 1925 it was discovered that a dark, mud-like substance, composed of a mixture of oxides of iron and manganese, was accumulating in the water pipes, making continual flushing-out necessary.
In 1929 Carl Zapffe started research and experimentation which resulted in removing the manganese and iron by a system of filters. The demanganization plant was constructed in 1931 at a cost of $65,000. Only one other such system was operating in 1946, one at Mankato.
Brainerd's water has remained pure and sparkling since.
BACK IN 1908, when the Water and Light board took over the city's utilities, electricity was being supplied by a local plant, using power under a contractual agreement with Northwest Paper Company for use of the east end of the dam. In 1910 the Brainerd plant burned. The Northern Pacific came to the rescue, supplying necessary electricity for domestic uses, though none for street lighting.
From 1910 to 1912 Toltz Engineering Co. ran a gas-producer electrical plant to supply Brainerd, but when it burned the city started to get power from. Cuyuna Range Power Co. of Deerwood.
Along came American Power and Light Co., which through its subsidiary, Minnesota Power and Light, Duluth, bought an electrical producing company in Little Falls and the Cuyuna Range properties, including the Riverton plant, and set up its district office in Little Falls. Brainerd continued getting its electricity from that firm.
BRAINERD BUYS its electricity wholesale at its own switchboard in its own central station at the water pumping station and then distributes and retails it itself.
IN DECEMBER, 1882, Brainerd city fathers passed an ordinance granting the Brainerd Electric Light Company the right to construct and operate a system of electric lighting for a period of 10 years.
However, difficulties prevented the company to begin construction of a plant, and the ordinance was later repealed.
In 1884, another ordinance was passed granting another private firm the right to furnish electrical power to the city. But this firm also failed to live up to the ordinance, although it did construct a power plant. The company was able to give Brainerd its first look at electric street lighting, on October 8, 1887, amidst fanfare and band playing.
OTHER ATTEMPTS, both by private firms and by the city, to give reliable electric current service to Brainerd failed. In 1905, while the city was operating its own power plant, a fire destroyed the plant.
An arrangement was then made with the. Northern Pacific Railroad, which had its own power plant, to furnish the city with electricity. This arrangement went along fine for a few years, but by 1908 the use of electricity had increased to such an extent that N. P.'s plant could no longer carry the extra load.
On November 18, 1910, a franchise was issued to a St. Paul engineering firm to provide the city electrical power. The company built a power plant at the east end of Laurel Street and used gas as fuel to run the generators. Its service, like many of its predecessors, proved unsatisfactory. and in 1913 the company went out of business.
WHILE ALL this electrical turmoil was taking place in Brainerd, an outside company was coming into its own and was furnishing reliable electric service. This was the Cuyuna Range Power Company, which was organized in 1911. Its first power plant was built in Deerwood and was completed that same year. From Deerwood, the company extended its lines to Cuyuna and later to Crosby.
In 1912, the city of Brainerd and Cuyuna Range Power Company signed a contract for furnishing power to the city. The service was to begin upon completion of the company's new power plant being built at Sylvan. In May, 1913, the generators of the Sylvan plant began turning, and the plant began feeding electricity to Brainerd.
Reproduced from the Centennial Edition of the Brainerd Daily Dispatch (1871-1971).
