Electrifying Democracy

By the time Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, the federal government was already playing a significant role in the electricity sector. In 1918, the government began construction of the Wilson Dam at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The project, which dammed the Tennessee River, was designed, in part, to provide electricity to a nitrate plant which could help supply the US military with explosives. In 1931, federal workers began construction of the Hoover Dam, on the border of Nevada and Arizona. That project would become a critical part of water management and electrification in western states. In 1933, the federal government created the Tennessee Valley Authority which had broad authority to provide flood control, electricity production, and economic development to the people living in the southeastern US, a region that was plagued by poverty and disease.