Clearwater Power Company

Clearwater Power Company (first called Clearwater Valley Light and Power Association) began with Kenneth Summers and other rural folks that yearned for "the electric".

In 1936, Kenny managed a farmer's co-op, the Lenore Grain and Seed Grower's Company. The machines, needed to process the grain seed, couldn't be run safely and efficiently by anything but electric motors. The farmer's co-op needed power, but the nearest power line was miles away, south of Gifford, Idaho.

Would the local invester owned utility help? You bet. For a mere $1500 per user and ownership of the line after the users built it.

That didn't sit well with Kenny. He wrote to the Federal Rural Electrification Administration, founded a year earlier to serve as banker for low-cost loans to local groups who wanted to bring the wonders of electricity to the farms and rural areas of America. Kenny contacted those in Reubens and Lapwai, Idaho who also wanted power. In April, 1937, these neighbors got together, talked it over and decided to elect officers and directors. The Clearwater Power Company was born.

Over the following decades, they did what they set out to do - bring needed electricity from distant points to their neighbors and friends, to places where nobody else wanted to go - or would go.

Bringing electrical power to the 10,000 homes and businesses stretching from St. Maries, Idaho to Troy, Oregon; and from Garfield, Washington to Weippe, Idaho; was like most movements - hard fought and slow in coming. Putting in over 2,800 miles of line over some of the nation's worst terrain, on behalf of sometimes only 3 customers per mile of expensive line, was hard and took a commitment only a neighbor-owned cooperative was willing to provide.

Then as now, whenever and wherever there are power outages, the linemen brave the distance and bad weather to restore service.

That cooperative spirit lives on in the member-owned Clearwater Power Company. That determination, that neighbor helping neighbor attitude, combined with the hard work, professionalism, diligence, and care that built this region, also built Clearwater Power Company and the electrical system that serves its members.