Little remains of the important facility built by the Fries Manufacturing and Power Company of Salem (Winston-Salem) as North Carolina’s first hydroelectric dam and power station that transmitted electricity over a long distance, in this case from a stone dam across the Yadkin River to a substation in Salem in present Winston-Salem. The transmission line was 13 1/2 miles long. In contrast to the lesser streams such as the Haw and Deep Rivers and their tributaries that powered early manufacturing in the central Piedmont, generating power from the long and mighty Yadkin was challenging and costly—and often highly profitable.