Texas Power & Light Company

In 1912 Texas Power & Light Company was incorporated to consolidate several smaller public utility companies that had been operating in Texas since the 1880s. Texas Power & Light produced and supplied electric power in north-central Texas. It collaborated with other nearby power companies, such as Dallas Power & Light, Texas Electric Service Company, Houston Lighting & Power, and others. The company was a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary by the 1930s: Electric Bond & Share operated American Power & Light, which controlled Southwestern Power & Light, which in turn held the common stock of Texas Power & Light. In 1945 the Texas power companies controlled by Electric Bond & Share were reorganized under a holding company, the Texas Utilities Company, which controlled all of Texas Power & Light's stock. At that point, Texas Power & Light, Texas Electric Service Company, and Dallas Power & Light ran a fully interconnected power system in Texas, all under the Texas Utilities Company. In 1946 Texas Utilities' revenues were $42 million; by 1950, they were $67 million. In 1950, as part of its liquidation, the parent company, American Power & Light, distributed its Texas Utilities stock holdings to its own stockholders, effectively making Texas Utilities a public company. By the 1950s business was booming and Texas Utilities delivered power to one-third of the population of Texas. Texas Power & Light provided power to the rapidly growing population and industrial sector of Dallas. In 1952 Texas Power & Light built a power plant to supply the burgeoning power needs of the Aluminum Company of American (Alcoa) in Rockdale, Texas. In 1952 Texas Power & Light incorporated a subsidiary company, Bi-Stone Fuel Company. Bi-Stone Fuel focused on acquiring fuel gas for use in producing electric power. In 1955 Texas Utilities had revenues of $127 million, nearly double what they had been five years before. Texas Utilities Company grew so rapidly in the 1940s and 1950s that by 1956 it had become a blue chip company, according to Barron's. Texas Power & Light alone had revenues of $95.5 million by 1964; in 1968 it had revenues of $132 million. In 1971 Texas Utilities as a whole had revenues of $563 million. In 2000 Texas Utilities changed its name to TXU. Note: The deal book in the Lehman Collection has a map of Texas Power & Light's infrastructural network as of 1969.