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Winter/Spring 2025 ~ Lighting the Hills: The Slow Electrification of Rural Richmond

Electric power first came to Richmond in 1903 when a mill property at Huntington Gorge was converted to a generating plant for the newly formed Richmond Light and Power Company.  The company strung transmission lines across three miles of hilly terrain from the power plant to Richmond Village.  Farms fortunate enough to lie along this route could also connect to the power lines.

A local resident explained that when electricity did become available, it went to the barn before the house.  The introduction of electrified milking machines and separators was a boon to farmers.  Homes at that time often had gas washing machines and refrigerators, so the greatest need for electricity was in the barn.  The most popular appliance when homes first were electrified was the clothes iron.  Housewives were delighted to give up the heavy metal irons heated on their cook stoves. 

A 1946 map of electrical power lines in the Richmond area shows Green Mountain Power supplying electricity along Route 2 from the village to Jonesville, and Vermont Electric Co-op serving some rural customers.  Parts of the Dugway (including Dorothy Catchapaw’s farm), and all of Cemetery, Snipe Ireland, and Stage Roads were still without power at that time. One home on the Dugway remained without power until 1971 … just 10 years before the launch of the first IBM personal computers!

Richmond Power & Light generating plant ca. 1905

The Rochelle Farm on the Dugway Road in Richmond, not far from the former power generating station, had no electricity until 1971.

Dorothy Catchapaw lived on one such farm from 1914 until 1920. “Our farm house was wired for lights,” she recalled; “all the wires were on the outside of the ceiling, not [hidden in the walls] as they are now.  They did not work when we were there as the electric plant was not working anymore.” Unfortunately for the Catchapaws, the Richmond Light and Power Company ceased operations in 1910 and the plant at Huntington Gorge was falling into ruins when Dorothy lived nearby as a child.

Farming without electricity was labor intensive. Milking was done by hand and the milk kept cool with ice harvested in winter; cream was skimmed by hand-cranked separators; light was provided by kerosene lanterns that often started barn fires. In the early 1940s only 33% of U.S. farms had electricity. Chittenden County’s more-populated areas were served by Green Mountain Power, which began supplying Richmond Village when the Huntington Gorge electrical plant closed.  Other parts of the town remained without power until the Vermont Electric Co-Op was organized in 1938 by farmers who had been bypassed by other utilities.