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INTERSTATE POWER COMPANY
Interstate Power
Company was a Dubuque, Iowa based utility company. Interstate
celebrated its 50th
Anniversary on April 18, 1975. The company began as early as 1913
when a group of Chicago financiers began consolidating small utility
companies as part of the Utilities Development Corporation. In 1924
the corporation acquired the Dubuque Electric Company, then the sole
remaining provider of electricity to Dubuque with subsidiaries
supplying power to East Dubuque, Illinois, and Dyersville, Iowa. In
1925 the Chicago financiers incorporated their utility as the
Interstate Power Company. The home office was located in the former
offices of Dubuque Electric at 10th
and Main.
A period of rapid
growth for the company resulted in the company spreading farther
into Iowa and parts of Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota,
Oklahoma, South Dakota, and the province of Manitoba, Canada. The
stock market crash of the Great Depression in 1929 brought the
company's good fortune temporarily to an end. Thirteen years and
three company reorganizations would be needed to restore Interstate
Power's financial stability.
In the 1940's
Interstate divested itself of all operations that were not part of
Northern Iowa and Southern Minnesota. In addition they picked up
Eastern Iowa Power system and the Iowa/Minnesota properties of
Central States Power and Light.
As part of
reorganization, fringe operations were sold including the Dubuque
bus system that Interstate had created from the trolley system in
1933. In 1936 when Interstate's bus fleet operated seven days a
week, Dubuque residents could have a day's worth of sightseeing for
twenty-five cents.
In 1991, Interstate
Power Company became part of a holdings merger with Wisconsin Power
and Light which was based in Madison, Wisconsin and IE Industries,
which was based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The merger of these three
public utility companies would become incorporated as Alliant Energy
Corporation in 1998. Today (2011) Alliant Energy Corporation employs
about 5,000 people and provides electricity to approximately 1.4
million customers in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. |
Dubuque
County IAGenWeb