In 1909 the Town of Wake Forest began generating electric power from a small brick building that still stands on Elm Avenue. People began wiring their homes – wires above the ceiling stretched between ceramic spools – and Wake Forest College trustees quickly approved money to electrify college classrooms and dormitories, replacing the old gas lighting fixtures.
But houses in town had wells in the back yard and privies; the town maintained two wells in White Street, which was still dirt. There was an ongoing problem with privies aside from the flies and rats they attracted and the smell. They needed cleaning and many people neglected to do so.
The college had a small water and sewer system and college officials who lived here saw the rest of the town needed the same basic services. Town government and the college had always been intertwined. In 1920 the mayor was J.G. Mills and the commissioners were J.M. Brewer, F.W. Dickson, I.O. Jones, W.R. Powell and E.W. Timberlake Jr. Mills and Timberlake were college professors, Brewer, Dickson and Jones were merchants and Powell was part of the ownership of the Royall Cotton Mill in its separate town on the north side of Wake Forest. The town’s economy was based on the college and its students and trade with farmers around the town.
In December 1919 town voters approved $100,000 for a water system ($1,295.945 in 2018 dollars). Somehow – the minutes from the town board meetings in those days were brief, without detail, and sometimes inscrutable – that bond was increased in 1920 to $125,000 with $105,000 designated for a water system and $20,000 for a sewer system. The town officials asked the state for permission to release the sewage into the Neuse River, permission the state granted.
Town workers or contractors dammed up Smith Creek east of town for the water supply. W. W. Holding sold a small lot on Elm Avenue to the town for $2,500, and the town built a treatment plant there – filtration and chlorination – across from the original electric light plant. (That water plant was abandoned in the 1960s when the town built the Smith Creek Reservoir and the G.G. Hill treatment plant. The Elm Avenue building stood vacant for decades, home only to pigeons, bats and mosquitos. Town attorney Ellis Nassif, who lived next door, used, for him, very strong language in trying to persuade the town to clean it or sell it. Today, much renovated, it is a dentist’s office.)
Work on the water system obviously went quickly because water began flowing into homes, businesses and college buildings in 1921. The minimum bill was $1.50 a month with no charge for the sewer, which was completed a couple years later. The sewer outfalls – where the pipes dumped the untreated sewage – were on Richland and Smith creeks below the water impoundment. Both flow to the Neuse.
By 1925 the town was abandoning and filling in the public wells.
With a water system the town could organize a fire department in 1921. T.M. Arrington was the first fire chief, authorized to organize the volunteer firemen. In return for their service as firemen, the 23 volunteers were exempt from street duty and tax. At that time, all men between 25 and 50 years were obliged to either work three hours on the dirt streets each quarter or pay $3.
Arrington purchased the town’s first fire truck, a LaFrance, for $1,650 and rented the front of the Harris garage at $12.50 a month as the first fire station.
The town board gave orders to Home Telephone and Telegraph Company, housed in the back of the T.E. Holding drug store, to make sure there were operators on duty 24 hours a day to receive fire alarms and coordinate with Arrington about the alarms.
