Hold That Line

 

"Convinced that the safety of otheir families and the health of their land was disregarded in favor of the gluttonous energy consumption of cities, the farmer-led revolt began as questioning and escalated to rampant civil disobedience, peaking in 1978 when nearly half of Minnesota’s state highway patrol was engaged in stopping sabotage of the project."  

Powerline-“The first battle of Americas energy war by Paul Wellstone & Berry Caspers. Carlton College professors, 

In the late 1970's, Lowry Minnesota, my home town, was the epicenter of the country's first energy protest. The electrical co-ops, United Power Associates (UPA) & Cooperative Power Association (CPA) obtained permits to construct a high-voltage power line across 430 miles of farmland from the Coal Creek Station near Underwood, North Dakota, conveniently built next to a lignite mine, through Central Minnesota to the Dickinson Station in Wright County near the Twin Cities. That the protest was about the hazards of coal burning power plants might be a bit of hyperbole - this was the 1970's after all.  The term 'Global Warming' was first used in 1975 and did not gain traction until the late 1980's. There were of course environmental activists who were vehemently opposed to burning coal to produce electricity - and nuclear power for that matter, although the Three Mile Island disaster was still in the future. Environmentalists way ahead of their time. But the main points of grievance were farmer protests over eminent domain taking their farmland for towers, the decrease of the land value and safety concerns surrounding a high voltage line running overhead. And the fact that the beneficiaries of the power were "The Cities" amped up the anger.

Pope County is home to many small farms owned by families for a hundred years, growing mainly row crops. So you can imagine the problems faced when fields are "interrupted" by 150' high towers. In addition to the resentment over lost productive land to these towers seen as a land grab by the co-ops, there were also concerns over potential health hazards. It will cause cancer. Your cows will lose all their hair and won't reproduce. You'll be electrocuted while driving your tractor ... The fact that the State of Minnesota refused to allow the towers on state land due to concern for wildlife habitat only reinforced the protesters position.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources claims that the line might “affect the behavior of animals and change wildlife habitat and affect the physiological state or conditions of plants and animals." Harrumphs Farmer Art Isackson:  “I guess a skunk is worth more than a farmer."  

Inside the red brick town hall in Lowry, a hamlet of 257 in west-central Minnesota, angry farmers talk bitterly about Governor Rudy Perpich and his "invading redcoats” and vow never to give up the fight.

Time Magazine Feb 1978

So the protests began, at first following the Civil Rights example of non-violence:  sit-ins, obstruction of the building equipment, road blocks, and on a particularly windy day, driving a manure spreader past surveyors at speed. When power-company survey crews invade their fields, farmers harassed them with onrushing snowmobiles. They blocked construction machinery with pickup trucks and boulders. They shoved welding rods into the radiators of the power companies’ tractors, sprinkled sand and gravel into gas tanks. Four masked men on horseback menaced one work crew. 

Arrests followed. More than 40 farmers were arrested for vandalism and interfering with construction. The Pope County attorney resigned rather than prosecute his friends and neighbors. 

In point of fact, the cooperatives were pretty inept at explaining and defending the need for this line and quite arrogant toward the rebelling peasants. At one meeting, a co-op rep said “I don't know what you're making such a fuss about this for, it's going to go through no matter what you say”, which of course was true but it didn't improve the relationship between UPA/CPA and the farming community.

"The hated line is a 400,000-volt power transmission cable. After a two-year court fight, the line is beginning to slice a 160-ft. wide swath through the dairy and grain country.   ...  As the line’s intimidating 150-ft. tall towers (every quarter mile) march through relatively small family farms, a landowner can find his hard-won acres chopped up. The high wires also discourage pilots from doing increasingly important aerial spraying and seeding. Besides, Minnesota farmers are fully aware of the experience of people living near similar high-voltage lines elsewhere. The lines literally snap, crackle and pop, and they set up electromagnetic fields that can produce jolting, if nonlethal, shocks in anyone touching ungrounded machinery and other metallic conductors within 200 ft. 

Time Magazine Feb 1978

In 1978 I was teaching school in Hastings, but we generally spent a good deal of the summer back in Pope County. The anger was palpable. Pope County (also Grant & Stearns County) residents were pretty universally opposed to the line with the most heat of course coming from those farmers where the towers would be erected. There were a few farmers, generally those unaffected by the route, who rented out some of their land for use in the construction of the towers, being paid handsomely. This did not sit well and in some cases friendships were destroyed.  

Tensions were high. At some point, a faction of the protesters turned to sabotage. From 1978 to 1983 16 towers were toppled by cutting the legs and thousands of insulators were shot out. A $100,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest of tower saboteurs. Many people certainly knew or suspected who the perpetrators were but ... there were no takers.. 

I worked in Hoplin & Nelson Hardware, a traditional farm focused hardware but also - second only to Lee's Barber Shop & The Dahl House - a gathering for "discussions" about the situation. We at the hardware were in a bit of a quandary. Yes, the protesters had our sympathy but we also sold dynamite and guns and ammunition. Dynamite was used frequently by farmers to blow stumps or rocks in their fields and ditching dynamite quickly produces a nice drainage ditch when a line of dynamite sticks detonates in rolling wave. It's quite a sight. We recorded every sale - purchaser name, dynamite type and amount. Same with ammunition purchases. We made a show of doing this so the buyer would know if a tower was dynamited they could expect a visit from the authorities. As far as I know, no explosive was used to knock down a tower.

In May, 1978 a protest march was planned, covered by national media.

Governor Perpich (at the request of the Pope County sheriff) sent in over two hundred state patrolmen. On that first morning (it was a Monday morning) it was like going to work, everybody went to Lowry and that was with the national press. Everybody was there, nobody knew what was going to happen, and there had been some activity out at the construction site west of Lowry, about three miles west. There they were to build some of the towers. So everybody got in this big caravan and went out there, but what they decided to do was a big media stunt and it worked out pretty well. They took out coffee, cookies and flowers to all the state patrolmen (about 150 of those guys) and it was twenty below and the wind was blowing like crazy and everybody was just freezing his hind end off. But everybody stood out there in the cold and they handed out the coffee and the cookies and the patrolmen kind of laughed and were at ease and stuff.

George Crocker, protest organizer oral history

In 1980, Alice Tripp, a Stearns County farm wife and protest leader, ran a surprisingly successful campaign for Governor largely based on opposition to the powerline and advocacy for alternative energy plus support for the rights of women and minorities . She lost but amassed 20% of the popular vote, leading to Perpich's defeat and the election of Al Quie - and as a side effect, launching Paul Wellstone’s Senate bid. Alice ran a true grass-roots campaign - she spent but $5000 on her campaign.

Despite the efforts of Tripp, the protesters and area farmers, the CU powerline became fully operational in August of 1979. The protest activities diminished but litigation continued into the 80's. The last tower to topple was in 1983.

And a listen. The powerline spawned a protest song  - Larry Long's “Pope County Blues".

Copyright ©  2025  Dave Hoplin