[The Old Colgate Powerhouse]

This album documents the construction of the Colgate powerhouse in Yuba County, California, which was built in 1899 for the Yuba Electric Power Co. The company was formed by John Martin and Eugene de Sabla, who had previously completed two other successful powerhouses in the state. Early hydroelectric plants were limited by the inability to transmit electricity over long distances, but by 1899 significant progress had been made. The power from Colgate was transmitted first to Sacramento, a distance of sixty-one miles, at 34,000 volts. Later, the power was sent a distance of 142 miles, via the Colgate-Oakland Transmission Line, to the Piedmont Power Plant at 60,000 volts (a previously unheard of amount of pressure). In 1900, Martin and de Sabla merged the Yuba Electric Power Company with other outfits to form Bay Counties Power Company and three years later they reformed it again as Pacific Gas and Electric.

The photographic work was clearly accomplished by a professional. The images are uniformly crisp and smartly composed. The album begins with an image of the powerhouse’s major backer and namesake, New York financier Romulus Riggs Colgate. He is proudly posed atop a wooden flute alongside John Martin. This photograph was published in a 1912 issue of “Pacific Service Magazine,” in an article commemorating Colgate after his death.

The book goes on to meticulously document the entire process of construction from July of 1899 to March of 1900. A handful of the images in the album were reproduced alongside “The Story of Colgate and Yuba Power Plants,” a 1910 article published in the “Journal of Electricity, Power, and Gas” (though unfortunately no photographer is credited). The article is a thorough and fascinating account of the backbreaking endeavor.

Along with the images of the laborious undertaking, we see portraits of the workers and their living conditions. There are many imposing shots of the powerful machinery including the generators and transmitters, which were provided by Stanley Electrical MFG. CO. of Pittsfield, MA. One photo shows an intimidating piece of equipment with a handwritten sign warning the workers, “KEEP AWAY SURE DEATH.” Another photograph of a bearded man on horseback, is quite possibly Eugene de Sabla. De Sabla was born in Panama in 1865. Dubbed the "Father of PG&E," "leader of the hydroelectric industry," "chief among leading capitalists of San Francisco"--and an “incorrigible promoter.”

A handful of images toward the end of the album show completed power poles lining the streets of nearby towns. While almost entirely uncaptioned, the verso of one image has a manuscript annotation reading, "Colgate B.C. P. Co (Bay Counties Power Company) and another photograph shows the "J.E. Bennett Feed and Livery Stable, which was located in nearby Marysville, CA.

As for the album itself, the string binding is of a style commonly seen in East Asia, and the faded Chinese characters 部面 (“cover”) can be seen on the binding. It is likely that these were a publisher’s mark and that the cover was bound upside down. The photographs are mounted to extremely thin sheets of paper. It is likely that the book was bound by a business owned and operated by one of the many Chinese immigrants to the area at the time.

The Colgate plant was shut down in 1948 and removed to make room for a new plant, which is still in operation today.