A Wisconsin paper town switched on America's first central hydroelectric station
On September 30, 1882, a plant on the Fox River began sending hydroelectric power from a central station, a first for the nation. Its customers were Appleton's paper mills and a mansion called Hearthstone. Four years later the same small Wisconsin city ran the country's first commercially successful electric streetcars.
Before any mills, this stretch of the Fox River north of Lake Winnebago belonged to Ho-Chunk and Menominee people. The Menominee ceded it in the Treaty of the Cedars in 1836; their name for the place, Ahkonemeh, means roughly watches for them place. Fur trader Hippolyte Grignon put up the White Heron in 1835 as a family home, inn and trading post. Settlement proper began in 1847, as three villages named Grand Chute, Appleton and Lawesburg, which merged in 1853 with John F. Johnston presiding. City status arrived on March 2, 1857, under mayor Amos Story.
Education and paper grew side by side. Lawrence University opened in 1847 with Amos A. Lawrence's backing, and his New England father-in-law Samuel Appleton, who never set foot in Wisconsin, gave 10,000 dollars and lent the town his name. The first paper mill appeared in 1853, and the hunger for power produced the Vulcan Street Plant. Appleton also claims Wisconsin's first telephone and the first incandescent light in a city beyond the East Coast. Valley Fair, opened in 1954, said it was the country's first enclosed mall, a claim other malls dispute.
There is a darker chapter. From about 1930 to 1970 it was a sundown town where Black people could not stay overnight, and in 1936 the Institute of Paper Chemistry failed to hire the chemist Percy Julian, who went to Glidden in Chicago instead. Later testing after the Flint crisis found infant lead levels of 4.5 per 100, against a state average of 1.9.
Weather here can be extreme. At 5 p.m. on July 13, 1995, a dew point of 90 degrees Fahrenheit combined with 101 degree air to produce a heat index of 148. The town counted 11,869 residents in 1890 and 28,436 by 1940; the 2020 census found 75,644, sixth-largest in the state, including a Hmong community of 2,965 by 2022 estimates. Visitors can tour Hearthstone or see a Harry Houdini exhibit at the History Museum at the Castle.
Source: Appleton, Wisconsin
