James Delmage Ross (November 9, 1872 – March 14, 1939) was the superintendent of lighting for Seattle for 28 years and was the first administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration. He was instrumental in developing the Cedar Falls and Skagit River hydroelectric power plants. A self-taught engineer, Ross advocated for public utilities and regional power networks. He also later served as a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Early life
Ross was born November 9, 1872, in Chatham, Ontario. His mother died when Ross was two years old. When he was 16, his father died.
Fascinated by science from a young age, Ross became an expert in electricity through books and experimentation. In 1891, he graduated from Chatham Collegiate Institute. After teaching school for six years, he headed to the Klondike gold fields in 1898. After a year and a half of prospecting, Ross moved to Anacortes, Washington where he was a steam engineer in a cannery. Later, he moved to Seattle to open his own electrical business.
Seattle City Light
When Seattle voters approved a bond measure for a municipal power plant on the Cedar River, Ross developed blueprints for the infrastructure of what would become the Seattle Municipal Light and Power Plant and submitted them to the city engineer, Reginald H. Thomson. In 1903, Ross was appointed assistant city engineer and chief electrical engineer for Seattle. He began the Cedar Falls project with a timber dam which raised the river's level by . The water was directed by the dam into an diameter pipeline that was long and connected to a steel penstock. The water flowed from the penstock to two Pelton impulse waterwheels that turned two 1,200-kilowatt generators. The generators supplied power to the light bulbs in the powerhouse for the first time on October 7, 1904, and to the city of Seattle by January 31, 1905 through the newly-established Seattle City Light.
Ross was appointed superintendent of lighting for Seattle in 1911, a position he would hold for 28 years. As superintendent, he instituted programs to make Seattle City Light a national model for municipal ownership, such as encouraging the use of electricity for home heating, cooking, and other appliances, and directly selling appliances to customers. He staffed each branch office with an appliance salesman, offered free appliance repair, and arranged for home economists to give lessons on new labor-saving devices. In the 1914 mayoral election, due the popularity of Ross's programs, both candidates promised that Ross would remain superintendent of lighting.
A masonry dam to replace the timber dam at Cedar Falls that Ross pushed for against geologists' warnings caused two floods, one in 1915 and one in 1918, the first destroying the town of Moncton and the second destroying the town of Edgewick.
During the early decades of the twentieth century, Seattle was a battleground between private and public utility interests. Ross was a proponent of municipal ownership of utilities, and felt the duplication of infrastructure by competing privately-owned utilities was wasteful. Puget Sound Power & Light, a private utility company, frequently attacked City Light, and Ross personally, through the local newspapers, public campaigns, and in lawsuits.
When World War I began, the need for power to support war production multiplied. Ross obtained approval from the Department of Agriculture to build dams on the Skagit River as part of the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project, because Puget Sound Power & Light, which held permits to build there, had failed to begin construction within the required time. The city council approved $1.5 million in bonds for construction. The construction camp was set up at the mouth of Newhalem Creek, giving the unincorporated community its name.
Contractors built a 25-mile rail line to Gorge Creek, allowing Seattle City Light to control access to the area. After the railroad reached the site above Newhalem, a two-mile tunnel was dug between the dam and the powerhouse. Work was frequently delayed by floods, mudslides, and avalanches. The schedule was further delayed by workers leaving to hunt for gold, labor troubles, a forest fire, and a shortage of electricity. Although Ross had estimated that the Skagit River operation would provide electricity to Seattle by 1921, those various delays pushed the date to 1924. Ross oversaw the construction of three dams for the project: one on Gorge Creek, one in Diablo Canyon, and one at Ruby Creek. The Gorge Dam generators were formally started by President Calvin Coolidge on September 17, 1924.