The records of the Fargo Engineering Company consists design reports, field notes, and photographs of various dam an power plant construction projects as well as office files, primarily correspondence. The records consist of eleven linear feet of materials dating from 1897 to 1951 with the bulk of the documents dating from 1910 to 1930. The record group has been divided into two series: Job Files and Office Files.
Fargo Engineering Company of Jackson, Michigan was the outgrowth of the engineering business started in 1895 by William G. Fargo, a pioneer in hydroelectric engineering. In 1888, Fargo opened an office in Jackson that performed general mapping and surveying work. In 1893 he published a detailed property map of Jackson, and in 1895, he began making surveys of Michigan rivers for water power developments. This work resulted in much of the electric power development in Michigan by Consumers Power Company. In 1913 William G. Fargo started the Fargo Engineering Company, which was incorporated in 1921.
From 1900 until his retirement in 1925, Fargo and his company provided civil engineering design and construction supervision services in connection with power plants and railways for the Michigan companies that later merged to form the Commonwealth and Southern Corporation. The company carried out hydraulic investigations of many Michigan rivers and did experimental engineering work in hydro-power. In particular, Fargo Engineering did much experimental work in spillway design incorporating "Tainter" gates (a form of radial gate adapted to timber construction which had been patented by Jeremiah B. Tainter of Menomonie, Wisconsin), evaporation studies in connection with reservoirs, and investigation of possible dam sites in Michigan and elsewhere. The company, in addition, made topographic surveys of most of the rivers in Michigan's Lower Peninsula and specialized in dams built on soil foundations. During this period, the company completed sixty-one hydroelectric plants and nine major power steam plants in twenty-nine states. The company also designed high tension transmission lines, power substations and office and factory buildings.
Some of the more important hydroelectric and steam power generating plants the Fargo Company built in Michigan while Fargo was with the firm are the Mio, Alcona, Loud, Five Channels, Cooke and Foote plants on the AuSable River, the Webber on the Grand River, the Ceresco, Plainwell, Otsego and Trowbridge plants on the Kalamazoo River, and the Junction plant on the Manistee River. In addition to Jackson, steam plants bearing the Fargo imprint are at Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids and Flint.
While Fargo Engineering Company was largely concerned with the design of power plants in Michigan, it also provided design, construction and consulting services for other Midwestern power syndicates, including: the Indiana and Michigan Electric Company of South Bend, Indiana, the Iowa Railway and Light Company of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the Wisconsin-Minnesota Light and Power Company. Additionally, Fargo Engineering supervised construction of several hydro-electric sites in New England and designed five plants with automatic flood gates on the Guadalupe River of Texas for Texas Power Corporation and Texas Hydro-electric Corporations.
Born in Jackson on December 6, 1867, William G. Fargo was a nationally known civil engineer, city planner and naturalist. In addition to his work in hydroelectric power construction, Fargo was an early developer of the city of Jackson and was considered the "father" of the city zoning ordinance. William Fargo remained active in zoning and city development until 1948, well past his 1925 retirement from Fargo Engineering Company. A noted scientist, he was an honorary curator of birds and paleozoology at the University of Michigan Museum of paleontology and zoology and contributed substantially to the museum's bird specimen collection. He remained unmarried throughout his lifetime and died at the age of 89 on February 2, 1957.
