Granite Hydroelectric Power Plant Historic District
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The Granite Hydroelectric Power Station was built in 1896–1897 at the mouth of
Big Cottonwood Canyon Big Cottonwood Canyon is a canyon in the Wasatch Range southeast of Salt Lake City in the U.S. state of Utah. The -long canyon provides hiking, biking, picnicking, rock-climbing, camping, and fishing in the summer. Its two ski resorts, Brig ...
, about southeast of
Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...
,
Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
, United States(in what is now eastern
Cottonwood Heights Cottonwood Heights is a city located in Salt Lake County, Utah, the United States, along the east bench of the Salt Lake Valley. It lies south of the cities of Holladay and Murray, east of Midvale, and north of Sandy within the Salt Lake City, U ...
. The plant comprises the powerhouse, transformer house, a wooden conduit, penstocks, and a small dam. Like the Stairs Station upstream, it represents an intact high-head generating plant from the late 19th century.


Description

The powerhouse is a rectangular brick building on a concrete foundation, with extensive
corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...
ing. The interior is a single room with two
Pelton wheel The Pelton wheel or Pelton Turbine is an impulse-type water turbine invented by American inventor Lester Allan Pelton in the 1870s. The Pelton wheel extracts energy from the impulse of moving water, as opposed to water's dead weight like the trad ...
s flanking a generator, which replaced two older turbine-generator units. A work area in the station was powered by a Pelton wheel driving a belt, an unusual feature. The ceiling is a peaked assembly of steel beams with an arched brick infill. Water is supplied through a steel conduit and
penstock A penstock is a sluice or gate or intake structure that controls water flow, or an enclosed pipe that delivers water to hydro turbines and sewerage systems. The term is inherited from the earlier technology of mill ponds and watermills. H ...
system with a head from the Stairs Station upstream. The dam, built in 1945, is part of neither historic district. The transformer house is a plainer version of the power house. The operator's residence is nearby, built using the same sand-colored brick with extensive corbeling and a hipped roof. Two other residences of wood frame construction stand nearby, added in the 1920s. The present operator's residence is outside the historic district.


History

The Granite Power Station was built beginning in 1896 by the Utah Power Company, owned by the Salt Lake City Railroad Company to provide power to the company's streetcar system. The station did not live up to expectations and was frequently out of service. After several changes of ownership, the plant passed into the hands of Utah Power and Light in 1912.
PacifiCorp PacifiCorp is an electric power company in the western United States. PacifiCorp has two business units: # Pacific Power, a regulated electric utility with service territory throughout Oregon, northern California, and southeastern Washington. # ...
later took ownership in 1989 operating the site under its own name as well as the name Rocky Mountain Power.
PacifiCorp - About Us - Company History. Retrieved 2018-05-14 The Granite Power Station was placed on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
on April 20, 1989.


See also

*
National Register of Historic Places listings in Salt Lake County, Utah This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Salt Lake County, Utah, except those in Salt Lake City. Listings for Salt Lake City can be found here. This is intended to be a complete list of the properties and districts ...
* Stairs Station Hydroelectric Power Plant Historic District


References


External links

* {{National Register of Historic Places Industrial buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Utah Victorian architecture in Utah Renaissance Revival architecture in Utah Buildings and structures completed in 1896 Buildings and structures in Cottonwood Heights, Utah Historic American Engineering Record in Utah Hydroelectric power plants in Utah Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Utah National Register of Historic Places in Salt Lake County, Utah Energy infrastructure on the National Register of Historic Places