What was the Woodcock power plant, where was it, and what became of it?
Answer: the power plant was located on the property now housing John’s Body shop at the intersection of Lake Street and County Line Road.
The Central Ohio Light and Power Co., opened the plant in 1937. It serviced 37 communities including Findlay, North Baltimore and Wooster.
The photo accompanying this story shows the plant and indicates some of the plant's structure. The Bluffton plant received up to 11 loads of coal daily. You can see coal cars loaded on a side awaiting to be used for power.
The plant was mothballed in the 1970s and razed in the 1980s.
It was served by the Akron, Canton and Youngtown Railroad.
The eastern division of Central Ohio Light and Power had 310 miles of transmission and distribution lines radiating from Wooster.
The western division operated two other steam generating plans, one in Findlay and another in St. Marys, that was used for standby service. These plants serviced for than 200 miles of transmission lines.
The company’s power requirement share increased rapidly and additional generating capacity was needed, so a new plant location was obtained in Bluffton. This site included the then-abandoned National Stone quarry that was turned into a 26-acre artificial lake to furnish cooling water.
The plant used pulverized coal for fuel. A pair of steam generators supplied turbo-generators that produced the electrical power.
Equipment for the Woodcock plant came from the power industry’s leading manufacturers:
• Combustion Engineering made the fuel burning equipment and pulverizing mills
• Fort Pitt Bridge Works fabricated the structural steel and coal bunkers
• General Electric made the switch boards, main switches gear and substation transformers
• Ingersoll-Rand built the condensers
• Riley Stocker Co. produced the boilers
• Westinghouse supplied the turbogenerators and
• Worthington made the boiler pumps.
Today the Woodcock plant is part of forgotten Bluffton.
