Ridley Electric history

The Dawes brothers owned Southwestern until 1925, when they sold it to Middle West Utilities.

Thereafter, in 1928, it sold all its oil and gas properties in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana.

In 1930, it also sold off electricity-producing properties in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, acquired two years earlier.

Although court appeals and the Second World War slowed enforcement of the law, by 1944 the SEC ordered Middle West to sell off many of its holdings, in effect compelling the holding company's dissolution and forcing it into receivership.

Over the next decade, partly as a result of CSW's purchase of Transok Pipe Line, the sales of CSW more than doubled, reaching $425 million by 1970.

Two went into service in the late 1970s, at Welsh in east Texas and Flint Creek in northwest Arkansas. It completed a mine-mouth, lignite-fired plant, the Pirkey Power Plant, near Hallsville in east Texas in 1985, and the next year, in a joint venture with Central Louisiana Electric Co. (CLECO), opened another lignite facility, the Dolet Hills Power Plant, nears Mansfield in northwest Louisiana.

SWEPCO faced competitive bids and court delays, however, and no resolution had been reached by the summer of 1997.