Portland, ca. 1857 Energy Wood provided 80-90 percent of the energy used in the United States in the 1850s. In Portland at that time, virtually all the energy used was provided by wood. Burning its way through the local wood supply, Portland quickly earned the nickname “stumptown." Photos from that period unglamorously portray white-painted stumps in a wood smoke haze. Energy conservation in the uninsulated, drafty woodframe houses consisted of shutting up rooms and closing down the house at night with shutters. Even the wood stoves of the day were not very energy efficient. It is estimated that the amount of wood required to heat one house then could heat six houses today. In the early days wood stoves were imported from the east coast and brought to Portland by ship, but by the 1870s local manufacturers were using metal produced at the Oregon Iron and Steel Company to build stoves here. As one early advertisement noted, "By purchasing a Dexter Stove, it keeps the money in this state, and the prices are no higher than from eastern shores. It is made from iron from the Oswego mines." Although wood provided most of the home heating energy for the pioneers and some industrial applications in early Oregon, there were other sources of energy coming into use at the same time. Over half of the horsepower- hours of energy produced in the U.S. in 1850 actually did come from horses (another one-eighth came from humans). Two-thirds of all mechanical work was done by windmills and falling water. Water-powered wood mills cut the boards for Oregon's earliest frame houses. The first steam-driven mill, with a circular saw, was built in Portland in 1850. Refrigeration in early Portland was accomplished with ice. Two artificial ice factories and one company dealing with natural ice brought here from the mountains of Idaho were Portland's suppliers. Gas lighting was introduced to Portland about 1859 with the formation of the Portland Gas & Coke Company. On January 10,1859 the Territorial Legislature granted a franchise for the construction of a gas plant, making Portland Gas & Coke a de facto public utility. This legislative action, one month before Oregon became a state, has since been investigated (in 1907) but never challenged in court. In 1882 the East Portland Gas Light Company was formed to provide service to the growing east side area of Portland. In 1892 the two companies merged to form the Portland Gas Company. About this time electricity was replacing gas as a lighting source so the company successfully switched to marketing gas for cooking and water heating, and eventually house heating. Following the Lewis and Clark Exposition in 1905, Portland's population and demand for gas increased and the gas plant was converted from water gas operation (gas made from coal) to oil gas. With demands for gas overtaking capacity and a sorely felt need for development finance capital, the company recapitalized with the aid of American Power and Light Company—a subsidiary of the Electric Bond and Share Company of New York, organized in 1905 to assume control of General Electric's weaker utilities—to eventually become the Northwest Natural Gas Company. Completion of the Northern Pacific transcontinental railway in 1883 changed Portland's energy picture dramatically. Portland observed that event as the "Villard Celebration," in honor of Henry Villard, founder of the Northern Pacific and a mover and shaker in national electric utility corporate expansion. Only when the extensive cutting of the forests raised the price of wood did the demand for coal begin in the East. Coal consumption tripled in the U.S. between 1850 and 1861, and by 1885 it surpassed wood as the dominant fuel. Portland's use of coal lagged behind the rest of the nation's. Customs records reveal that in 1861 about 1,386 tons of bituminous coal were imported, mostly from Australia. Some Portland coal also came from such nearby locations as Coos Bay, Oregon, and Bellingham, Washington. The last half of the 19th century was a period of national experimentation for the emerging coal and oil industries. By-products such as kerosene, heating oil, and gasoline were the name of the game. The Pacific Coast Steamship Company's steamship, "State of California," arrived in the port of Portland on its maiden voyage in the summer of 1879. The history of electricity in Portland dates from that arrival. As the event was reported by the Oregonian of May 25, 1879; Wednesday evening the steamship State of California was illuminated | by the famous electric light, of i which so much has been written. \ The novelty of the light attracted a large crowd of our citizens, and during the evening probably 500 persons visited the vessel. . . The j light is pure white and gives day colors to all objects viewed by it. It is not so clear as daylight, but the "counterfeit” is almost perfect. The light is far more brilliant than that produced by gas, but yet not painful to the eyes when steadily bent on it. The lights are furnished by a small engine. The electric light is as much superior to gas as gas is superior to coal oil. During the 1880s and 1890s the various actors in the early electric utility development movement merged interests, a pattern occurring elsewhere in the country. In March 1884, P.F. Morey and George W. Weidler jointly organized the United States Electric Lighting 46
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