In 1889, the City of Anderson hired 26-year-old University of South Carolina engineering graduate William Church Whitner to build a steam power plant and water system, and he soon became convinced that hydropower could make long-distance transmission of electric energy possible there. On May 1, 1895, at McFall's Mill at High Shoals on the Rocky River, Whitner, as chief engineer of the Anderson Water, Light, and Power Company, used an experimental 5,000 volt alternating current generator installed in rented space in McGill's grist and flour mill to generate and transmit electric power 6 miles to the water system pumps at the Tribble Street power and water yard in Anderson. This was the first successful long-distance transmission of electricity in the South. That success brought financial backing for a larger dam and power plant at Portman Shoals on the Seneca River, 11 miles west, where the company built a 10,000 volt generator facility. When it began service on November 1, 1897, the Portman Shoals Power Plant was the first hydroelectric facility in the nation, and perhaps in the world, to generate high-voltage power without step-up transformers. Its generators powered the Anderson water system, street lights, businesses, private homes, and Anderson Cotton Mill, the first cotton mill in the South operated by electricity transmitted over long-distance lines, helping change the course of southern industrial development and earning Anderson the nickname "The Electric City" in 1895. A Westinghouse Electric Company generator manufactured on March 28, 1911, was one of five similar units still operating at Portman Shoals when the plant permanently shut down on December 9, 1960, because of flooding from Lake Hartwell; it later was displayed at the Coleman Recreation Center on Murray Avenue. Producing 1,390 KVA at 2,300 volts and 303 amps per terminal, it generated 2 phase, 60 cycle power and ran at 225 rpm. Although Portman Shoals' original generators were destroyed by dam breaks and electric fires in the plant's early years, this surviving unit came from the infancy of electric power generation. Building on his Anderson achievements, Whitner developed hydroelectric generating stations for communities across the South, including Columbus, Griffin, and Elberton, Georgia. Among his early employees was Citadel engineering graduate William States Lee. At the Catawba River in York County, South Carolina, Whitner partnered with Dr. W. Gill Wylie, but after financial problems at the Catawba plant he accepted a position with Virginia Railway and Power Company in Richmond, Virginia. Wylie later secured funding from his patient James B. Duke to complete the Catawba project using Whitner's original design, part of the broader story of Duke Energy Corporation and the industrialization of the southern United States.