South Fork Ilium Road

Trail Overview

Difficulty

Easy

History

The historic Ames power plant was built in 1890. Believed to be the first Alternating Current (AC) power plant. It was built by LL Nunn to provide power to the Gold King Mine. It hydroelectrically produced AC with design and engineering by Westinghouse Electric. George Westinghouse had studied and embraced the AC concept of Nikola Tesla and was building out those systems. Thomas Edison with Edison Electric was busy at the same time building Direct Current (DC) power systems in competition with Westinghouse. Of course we know Westinghouse won out with AC electric over DC.

Technical Rating