The city lights of downtown Ames were turned on for the first time 100 years ago this year.

In recognition of this event, the Ames Electric Company is hosting a celebration this Saturday which will include door prizes, demonstrations and the ISU solar car display.

The Ames Electric Company has a rich history from being one of the few solid waste burning power plants which attempts to reduce landfills, to monkeys escaping from a nearby zoo and hiding inside the plant during World War II.

In the beginning

By the late 1800s, the powers of electricity had finally been introduced. The convenience of it all grew in the small town of Ames, and by January of 1895, a committee was already examining the idea of lighting up Ames.

In March of the same year, the committee approved the electrical franchise with a citizens vote of 225 to 85.

Decisions were made quickly and on July 8, 1895, an ordinance was passed giving the go ahead to E.B. Hillman and Company of Peoria, Illinois, to start the franchise. In the contract it was decided that the company would provide 12 arc lights equaling the power of 1200 candles and 20 incandescent lights of 32 candle power each.

Construction by this out-of-state company, for unknown reasons, never started. On March 2, 1896 the contract was terminated while citizens quickly passed a 298 to 40 vote in favor of building a city owned power plant.

“It’s amazing to think that a small town like Ames had the opportunity for electricity back then,” Merlin Hove, director of Ames Municipal Electric System said. “Most people hadn’t even heard of electricity, let alone owned it.”

The plans were finalized and the first employees of the city’s own electrical company were hired making only $60 a month. Most of the labor included shoveling coal into the boilers, the majority done by hand.

Don Riggs, retired superintendent of the Power Plant, remembered shoveling coal into the fire box. “That’s all gone now,” Hove said, “everything is more high tech and computerized.”

Plant helps the environment

Ames was one of the first active power plants, and to this day is still one of the only solid waste burning plants in the country.

“The main reason we burn solid waste, instead of just coal, is to reduce the size of the landfills,” Hove said. “Plus we get much more heat from garbage instead of just dumping it into a hole, which in return gives us energy.”

About 90 percent of what is being burned is coal and the other 10 percent is solid waste.

Iowa State and the Ames Electrical Department have worked together to expand the plant over the years.

“In the beginning the university saw itself as separate from the ‘city workers’, we were on separate sides of the track,” Hove said. “Now we are working together, and it has made us a much better company.”

Iowa State has it’s own plant located on the northwest side of campus, but it is not large enough to do everything, Hove said. The university has been a huge contributor and has also created a long term partnership with the city owned plant.

The solid waste project was created to benefit the environment with help from Iowa State faculty and students in the electrical department.

“University people really helped to make the solid waste project possible,” Hove said. “We are pretty set in our ways over here, and ISU officials have coaxed us into making good decisions and trying new things we normally wouldn’t do.”

Crazy monkeys

The plant has run, with out many problems, for 100 years, but during World War II the company ran into some “little” problems.

“It was during the winter and quite a few monkey’s got loose in the Power Plant, I hear it was a mess,” Riggs said.

There used to be a zoo where Brookside Park is now located, and somehow the monkeys escaped, ending up in the boiler room. There was no way to catch them, Riggs explained, but they finally got it under control and fortunately no monkey’s were hurt.

An open house celebrating 100 years of business for the Ames Municipal Electric System will be held Saturday, October 19 from 9 am. to 5 p.m.

The plant is located on 502 Carroll Avenue and there will be many activities including; door prizes, tours, PrISUm solar car display, demonstrations and antique equipment displays.