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the Piedmont region of North Carolina is home to numerous corporate headquarters a strong industrial base a national banking center prestigious universities in many beautiful lakes but this region might look very different if 110 years ago there hadn't been a chance meeting between a man with vision and a man with money this meeting resulted in the creation of hydroelectric plants that turn the poor Carolina Piedmont into a manufacturing and financial powerhouse the story starts about a hundred and fifty years ago as North Carolina began to recover after the Civil War you need to remember that the south after the Civil War and long after Civil War was the poorest region in the country by far and the poorest of the poor was Mississippi next in Mississippi was the Carolinas South and North Carolina it was on the bottom of the list but a lot of different measurements education health care what Ella according to statistical abstracts published at the time twenty percent of North Carolina's population was illiterate kids spent only about 90 days in school a year urban areas like Charlotte and Raleigh were a bit more developed but back then most North Carolinians were poor farmers a handful of successful Carolinians wanted more for their native States the least well-known of the mall was dr. Gill Wiley a native of Chester South Carolina after the Civil War Wiley moved to New York to practice medicine at Bellevue Hospital even though he was a physician by training dr. Wiley also was a man with vision for Economic Development widely never forgot the catawba river that flowed near where he lived as a boy it was a free-flowing little river that spill down rocks and little waterfalls and it was ten miles from charlotte it was so rocky that it was no point in putting a city on it working in New York at the turn of the century Wiley probably knew about the massive hydroelectric power project at Niagara Falls he was probably also used in the lightbulbs invented by Thomas Edison 1879 Wiley also he knew the back home the Catawba River dropped a thousand feet in elevation as journeyed from the North Carolina mountains to the south carolina see while not as impressive or obvious as Niagara Falls this drop in elevation offered its own opportunities for hydroelectric power dr. wily and his brothers scraped together all their money hired an experienced engineer and built the first hydroelectric plant on the Catawba that station called India hook Shoals was completed in 1904 encouraged by the success of India hook shoals dr wily and chief engineer william states lee sketched out plans for a series of hydroelectric dams scattered up and down the Catawba but there was one big problem the cost Lee figured building this network of dams would cost around eight million dollars that's more than 205 million in today's dollars with no more money to fund his vision dr wily returned to New York to practice medicine fortunately for history at that very moment dr. Wiley was treating a very rich patient that patient also came from the Carolinas and light Wiley he wanted to help improve his native state this patient named James Buchanan Duke was also one of the richest men in the nation James buck Duke the man who would later in doubt Duke University wasn't all his wealthy a biographer wrote that Duke was born on a farm so poor that his family could hardly bring a living from its soil the family worked hard trying to earn a living growing in drying tobacco now the Dukes made their money in tobacco the gamble you know on machine made cigarettes what talked him into doing that and the family quickly recognized that he was the business genius of the family and they followed his lead they gambled on machine made cigarettes and then they made a lot of money by the turn of the century buck was in his forties and very rich he split his time between New York North Carolina and London England where he oversaw his family's European cigarette business buck Duke was a hard man to get a meeting with but his now infected foot made him a captive audience for his physician during one of their treatments dr. wily shared his ideas for hydroelectric power buck was intrigued Wiley summit engineer lead in New York to lay out their plans years later Lee would recount that the huge cost never phase buck Duke in fact lee said the cost seemed to excite him that chance meeting sparked the start of what would one day become Duke Energy in 1907 their first dam began making electricity and more dams were in the works area mill owners had access to clean and cheap energy but the mill owners weren't buying electricity was new you see it had only come in to practical use in the 1890s and it was still quite new and there were a lot of people who scared of it scared to bring it into their mills and said it would kill our people having no customers also could have killed the power company's future buck Dukes answer was to invest in mills and show owners electricity was safe it worked business was really looking up for hydroelectric power generation in the Carolinas in July 1916 11 years after buff Duke and Gil Wiley's chance meeting the power company announced plans for a six hydroelectric station no one could have guessed that the hurricane churning in the ocean at that very moment was another turning point one that could either transform the region's hydroelectric development totally or kill such development all together the rain began to fall on Saturday july eight 1916 the storm a category 4 hurricane stalled over the Carolinas rain poured down saturating the ground in raising the water table to dangerous levels by Tuesday July eleventh the rain finally stopped the Charlotte Observer reported signs of relief few realized another storm was about to hit two days later on July thirteenth another category 4 hurricane swept in north of Charleston South Carolina tragically this hurricane also stalled over the Catawba River Valley the second storm dumped even more water than the first the Catawba River rose to 47 feet above flood stage this was twice as deep as any previously recorded flood it happened suddenly the wind blew the clouds divided in four tones Nathan boulders went tearing down coding destined destruction in the week it just decorated a wall of water that swept down the Catawba River wiped out the bridges wiped out the villages along the river and really changed people's attitude towards this this you know tricular little stream all of a sudden it was an enemy that needed to be tamed the floods of 1916 pushed Power Company engineers to rethink hydroelectric operations their answer a series of damned reservoirs that would tame the water and let the power company harness the entire Catawba River with the support of Buck Dukes vast financial resources the company started building its first reservoir Lake the next spring over the next 50 years the power company ultimately created 11 lakes on the Catawba River creating that that chain of lakes from like James down to Mountain Island and Lake Norman and Lake Wylie and down into South Carolina really transformed the Catawba River Valley it meant that all of a sudden it was not a wild river anymore the lakes have allowed industry to be recruited to the Charlotte area because of sufficient water and inexpensive power production without this river without the lakes you would not have seen significant growth a lot of our banking wealth today comes out of textile mills the textile mills would not have all clumped here left New England if it were not for cheap hydroelectric power so as we think of our journey from fields to factories to finance that work of Gil Wiley and James be Duke at the turn of the century was really a turning point that put Charlotte the Carolinas and the South on a new industrial path by 1937 the power company was generating 1 billion kilowatts of electricity annually that year the Charlotte Observer calculated the value for its readers to produce this power by steam would require well over two million tons of coal which would have to be imported from other states at a cost of more than 10 million dollars this money instead of enriching the mining regions of other states is building up our own industries in the Carolinas we currently have some of the lowest cost energy in the nation when you're paying six in a kilowatt for power versus 30 cents a kilowatt you can run a mill much more efficiently in Cheaper by 1937 the Carolinas were home to the country's largest factories making towels denim aluminum and underwear because of hydroelectric energy operations the Carolinas had risen from positions of mediocrity at the turn of the century to being national leaders in industry and commerce by the 1930s even during the Great Depression 500 new industrial plants open for business in the Piedmont Carolinas none of this might have been possible if in 1905 there had not been a chance meeting between dr. Gill Wiley the man with ideas and buck Duke the man with the money you