Company Description

In the 1920s and 30s, American cities were lighting up with electricity. But farms and rural areas were getting left behind. Investor-owned utilities didn’t see any profit in delivering power to small towns and farms, so, most of the nation’s farms were left without power.

In 1936, Kenneth Summers (manager at the Lenore Grain and Seed Grower’s Co-op), set out to bring electricity to his home town of Lenore, Idaho. The nearest power line was miles away and despite repeated requests to the local electric utility, no reasonable agreement could be reached. Mr. Summers, along with R.H. Wallace of Lapwai and L.P. Teats of Reubens, took matters into their own hands and petitioned the Federal Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to support them in forming their own electric cooperative. By April of 1937, Clearwater Valley Light and Power was born.

Over the following decades, they did what they set out to do – bring needed electricity from distant points to their neighbors and friends, to places where nobody else wanted to go. Clearwater Power has brought power to 10,000 homes and businesses stretching from St. Marie's, Idaho to Troy, Oregon
and from Garfield, Washington to Weippe, Idaho. Building over 2,800 miles of line in some of the nation’s most rugged terrain, on behalf of sometimes only 3 customers per mile of expensive line, was hard and took a commitment only a neighbor-owned cooperative was willing to provide. We are proud to say that the cooperative spirit lives on today.