Electricity Comes to Damascus

Electricity Comes to Damascus. . In 1901 the first street lamps in Damascus were eight oil lamps on poles spaced on both sides of Main Street, now Laurel Avenue. Dave Wright was employed at 15 cents a day to keep the lamps lit., Then in 195 the Damascus Light and Power Company was created, using an old 1894 building that had been used to make furniture. A 400-foot mill race was built to provide water power. You are standing directly above the race, or water channel, which fed water into a long wooded tube called a flume. This went under the Rt. 58 bridge downstream from you and into the basement of the building, where a 75 horsepower generator had been installed and provided direct current (DC) power for about 12 houses. Before this time people lived by candlelight. Only a concrete slab and a short wall still remain from this two-story building., Local resident Eleanor Grasselli has this memory: "In Autumn when leaves would get caught in the wooden grate at the transition between the raceway and the flume, the direct current lighting would dim in the A.A. Mock house. I remember that my grandfather would take a flashlight and a rake and walk across the trestle to remove those leaves so that the water would flow faster." You can see where the gate was in front of you to the left., Two other electric plants existed. About half a mile downstream from here there was a plant which generated electricity for Lincoln Industries, a major furniture-making factory. The remains of the old building still exist. Lincoln Industries shut down in 1956., In 1924 a third electric plant was built two miles downstream on what is now the Black Horse Resort property. this building and its mill race are the best preserved of the three old plants. This was the main source of power for Damascus for years., In 1928 this plant on the Laurel was sold and in a few years was purchased by the Appalachian Electric Power Company, which today provides electricity to a multi-state area. Although the old power plants were used for several more decades, they eventually were no longer needed., (captions) , All that remains of the Damascus Light and Power Company. , The cinderblock building which housed the power plant providing electricity to Lincoln Industries. , The mill race for what was the main power plant for Damascus, located at Black Horse Report. , A graphic showing the location of the 400-foot mill race for Damascus Light and Power.