Columbia Hydroelectric Station, Columbia Tennessee
The Columbia Hydroelectric Station is the kind of smaller-scale, private-sector venture in capitalist hydroelectric engineering projects typical of the time of its construction on the smaller rivers in Tennessee. The Columbia Hydroelectric Station also represents a change in commerce, the business of trading goods, services, and commodities, and the gradual introduction of electrical power into everyday life. It provided stimulation to extend the city limits, plan for future electric needs, erect electric street lights, traffic lights, and power industry such as the phosphate extraction and refinement business in Maury County.
The Columbia Hydroelectric Station was constructed in 1925. Comparable with two other extant sites, all designed and built in the 1920s by the same two Nashville industrial engineering and construction firms, for the same public utilities firm. It operated for thirty-six years from 1925 to 1961, with only minor changes in generating machinery. The Columbia Hydroelectric Station retains its dam, powerhouse and many of its secondary elements and the site's integrity has not been so compromised that it prohibits the interest of current entrepreneurs in the feasibility of refurbishing the site for contemporary electrical power production.
Site Description
The Columbia Hydroelectric Station is located across the Duck River, in Riverside Park, Riverside Drive, in Columbia, the county seat of Maury County, Tennessee (population 51,095). The inactive, yet maintained, site is located in a municipal park, providing recreational facilities and opportunities for fishing at the base of the dam.
The site's original appearance has changed little from its date of construction in 1925. Like its sisters in Marshall and Bedford County, it was designed by the Nashville engineering firm of Freeland, Roberts and Co., and built by the well-known Nashville construction firm, Foster & Creighton, for the Southern Cities Corporation, a privately owned public utility company based in Chattanooga. According to Tennessee Electric Power Company documents:
The dam is described as being 263 feet long, with a forty-three-foot wing on the east bank of the Duck River. Its average width is twenty feet, and has a curved crest with a sloping spillway and reverse curve toe, a fish ladder, and a "V" shaped trash boom that projects out of the upstream side of the plant. The powerhouse contained two 570 horsepower vertical Francis-type turbines manufactured by the James Leffel Company. These turbines were restrained by Woodward oil pressure governors and were directly connected to vertical 400 kw Westinghouse synchronous generators. The plant operated until 1961 when the generating equipment was sold for scrap.
By 1915 the Francis-type of water wheel had replaced all other wheels of the pressure-and-reaction type in important new installations. Indeed, the Leffel version of the Francis type sold well through 1922, and as adaptable to any head of water from the lowest to the highest. The metal shed holding the plant's electrical transmission devices and accompanying the transformers stands today near the dam. A dispatcher could telephone instruction personnel to operate circuit breakers and generators that were miles away. Perhaps the best examples of this trend is found adjacent to the Columbia hydro site on the Duck River in Maury County, and at Walter Hill, in Rutherford County, on the Stone's River.
Today the dam is extant, as is the brick powerhouse and its concrete foundation, and the walkway to the powerhouse. While the station has remained dormant for nearly thirty years, there has been commercial interest in the hydro station as evidenced by applications for Federal Energy Regulatory Commission permit to reopen this site for electrical production.
The brick powerhouse has nine rectangularly shaped, six over six windows. The powerhouse door has three smaller windows in a triptych arrangement that allows for the entry of oversized equipment, and when closed gives the metal-framed-door lights a horizontal appearance. A ventilation hood stands on the wooden/composite roof of the powerhouse, as do the remnants of a small steel transmission line tower. A chain link fence impedes entry to the walkway, lined with steel safety fences, most likely the result of an effort to provide for the security of the site in more recent times. The V-shaped trash boom, fishladder, spillway, and dam footings are also still intact. Its contemporary appearance varies little from its original countenance.
View of Columbia powerhouse and walkway. Looking west (1989)
View of Columbia powerhouse, forebays, windows, transmission tower, ventilation device, walkway, concrete transmission tower supports, and "V"-shaped trashboom. Looking south (1989)
View of Columbia powerhouse showing concrete foundation, brick superstructure, walkway, fishladder and dam spillway. Looking west (1989)
View illustrating relationship of trash boom and powerhouse. Looking southwest (1989)
