The world was a different place in March 1912.

Major league baseball hadn’t gone farther west than St. Louis. The Titanic had yet to sail and sink. World War I was still two and a half years away.

And in Longmont, Colorado, a community of roughly 4,300 people,  the power poles were beginning to rise.

This month marks the 110^th anniversary of Longmont providing its own electricity. It’s a moment that almost snuck by this year. Maybe that’s understandable – after all, reliable and affordable public power has been a fact of life here for a very long time.

But it’s worth acknowledging. After all, we’re here because people like you cared.

There’s  a whole history of how we came to be, but the quick version is simple: it took a fight. Longmont homes and businesses hated the service they were getting from  the Northern Colorado Power Company – service so limited that electric lights could only be operated between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. each day. Many said they would rather go back to kerosene than stay with Northern.

So in 1911, Longmont voted to build its own hydroelectric plant near Lyons and transmission lines. (Yes, even then we were into non-carbon energy!) Northern fought it in court but on March 7, a judge gave Longmont the go-ahead. Within a week, the city hooked up 600 new electric connections.

If the origin story sounds similar to a certain community-owned broadband service that won an election 100 years later, it shouldn’t be surprising. Longmont has evolved a lot over the years, but its residents have always kept an eye on what the community needed  to grow and succeed. That’s why we have LPC’s reliable power. And NextLight’s blazing fast internet service. And a spirit that uses both to continually transform this community.

So thank you. Thank you for keeping the spirit of 1912 alive and this community strong.

Then and now, our most precious power source is you.