By Phil Roberts
About the same time that inventor Thomas Edison was constructing his Pearl Street station and developing equipment for it, while he was laying wires in a few New York streets to serve 59 (mostly commercial) customers with 1,284 lamp sockets, Cheyenne went ahead with its own electrical system.
In August 1882, a month before the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York connected its load of 300 amperes, the Brush-Swan Electric Light Company of Cheyenne was formed to bring street-lighting to the city with a population of around 8,000. Francis E. Warren was majority stockholder. By Jan. 1883, Cheyenne extended the carbon-arc lighting, not only along main thoroughfares but to stores and dwellings as well. At the time when some houses were wired, but incandescent lamps were difficult to obtain. Finally, by May, some lamps were received from Swan and were reported in operation.
In August, the board of the Cheyenne Club voted to light the club house with incandescent lights for a six-month trial basis. The directors agreed to pay $125 per month for four lights in the dining room to be turned on from 4 to half past eight each evening. All other rooms had lighting available, a total of four more lamps from 5 o’clock to 1 a.m. It was the first building lighted by electricity in Wyoming.
The first home was said to be that of L. R. Bresnahen, a three-story frame Georgian home (with a mansard roof), across the street diagonally from the Cheyenne Club (201 E. 17th St.). The house was built in 1882 for William Sturgis, but sold before he even moved in.
“This was the first home in the United States to have incandescent (filament) lights,” reads the entry for the home in the booklet, Early Cheyenne Homes. (Cheyenne: Laramie County Historical Society, 1975), p. 64. The entry continues: “On the walnut posts of the central hallway stairway were light bases of Chinese porcelain with shades of etched glass. When the lights grew dim, the bulbs were exchanged for new ones, free. Electric bells to ring in the kitchen from the master bedroom, dining room and the front door were operated by brass knobs pulled out from the wall.” (The home remained in the Bresnahen family until 1951 when it was sold and later demolished).
By 1884 the Swan-Brush electric plant had a dynamo that supplied electric power to 16 carbon-arc street lamps. During the day, the dynamo charged cast lead-plate storage batteries. At dusk, these were delivered from a wagon to residential customers, placed in a shed or under a porch, and connected to the house wiring system. The complete system in place with electric lights had a capacity that permitted 6-8 hours of daily operation of regular work (street lighting) and 16-18 hours for storing of batteries. A battery would operate 10 incandescent lamps for an hour. For parties or other occasions, more batteries were ordered. Customers were charged on a “per lamp rate.” By 1885, at least 50 homes were wired and lighted for a few hours every evening.
Laramie had lights in 1886.; Evanston, in 1888. The 1889 Governor’s report says lights were in use in Laramie, Buffalo, Cheyenne, Rock Springs and Evanston. But the Cheyenne system went into service first—”the first central battery lighting system” in the West.
Sources: Early Cheyenne Homes. (Cheyenne: Laramie County Historical Society, 1975), p. 64; “Turn on the Light,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, Dec. 27, 1882; Letter, Fred Warren to Gladys Riley, April 18, 1940, Wyoming State Archives, Cheyenne.
(Note: This was the start of the 1982 draft of what would become a longer article that, unfortunately, was not completed).