Electrifying Bonners Ferry

In the early 1900s, supplying Bonners Ferry's growing demand for electricity was difficult because low river flows and winter ice often halted power production, making electrical service sporadic. The area's first power plants were small private ventures: in 1902 local pharmacist J.F. Cook installed a turbine on the Moyie River but never completed the project, and in 1905 the Newport Electric Light Company of Myrtle Creek provided the city's first electricity. In 1907 a new owner improved the plant, added domestic water service, and renamed it the Bonner Water and Light Company. Among the improvements was a Pelton wheel, invented in the 1870s, which used a high-speed jet of water striking cup-shaped buckets to extract energy from moving water and transfer it to a turbine that generated electricity; this wheel produced electricity from 1906-1921. Between 1900 and 1920, the town's population grew from 349 to 1,236, and new technologies such as water pumps and electric irons increased household and business demand, while pumping flood water from farmlands and electrifying sawmills created major industrial needs. By 1917 the power plant was overtaxed, and the continuing need for more reliable electricity led the city to purchase the Myrtle Creek plant and form the Bonner Water and Light Department, marking the shift from private to public power. When electricity was scarce, sections of town received power only a few hours a day, residents relied on candles and kerosene lamps for backup, and during outages people used rain barrels and carried water from the Kootenai River in buckets because pumping water to storage tanks above town also required electricity.

Bonners Ferry, Idaho · United States