for construction of the lower dam at Dreher Shoals to James W. Jackson, of Augusta, Georgia and W. T. Van Brunt of New York. Between 1908 and 1911, ownership of the Dreher Shoals property shifted several times but it was eventually purchased by the Richland Public Service Company, a subsidiary of Columbia Railway, Gas & Electric Company. Since 1916, a man named Thomas Clay Williams had been proposing the development of hydroelectric power on the Saluda, Santee and Cooper rivers in South Carolina, but his propositions did not generate much serious interest. T. C. Williams was not an engineer, and his belief that massive power could be generated from the swamps and coastal plains of the state did not meet much enthusiasm with the leading engineers of South Carolina. It was not until the plans were brought before an engineer from New York, William Spencer Murray, that an engineer truly realized Williams's dream and its potential. William S. Murray was an engineer with much experience in electric power systems and generation. In 1920, Congress authorized Murray to head a study undertaken by the United States Geological Survey for the establishment of a large-scale electric power grid in the industrial northeast. He also had been the chief engineer on the project to electrify the New Haven Railroad out of New York City. Once Williams came to Murray to make his proposal in 1923, Murray and his partner, Henry Flood, Jr., pored over topographic maps of the region and worked on estimates. It looked as if they might be able to generate enormous power at very low cost. It was said that here, as Murray looked over a topographic map of the Saluda River Valley, his eyes glanced at the contour line. He followed the line as it meandered through the valley and noticed that the contour did not touch a railroad, and its highest elevation was never less than below the divide separating the Saluda Valley from the neighboring Broad River Valley. After winding around the valley of the Saluda for nearly , about west of Columbia its position the north side of the valley approached within of its position on the south side. Murray realized that a dam across such an expanse would be ideal for power development. He visited South Carolina to investigate. While in South Carolina conducting his survey, Murray envisioned a system much larger than Williams's plan