Jo Conn Guild

Who was Jo Conn Guild?

Josephus "Jo" Conn Guild, Jr. was an American businessman and engineer from Chattanooga, Tennessee. As president of the Tennessee Electric Power Company, he became one of the staunchest and most outspoken opponents of the newly formed Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s. With the help of attorney Wendell Wilkie, Guild waged a legal battle that questioned the constitutionality of TVA, culminating in a U.S. Supreme Court case dismissal that forced TEPCO to sell its assets to the new federal agency.

Working for his father's Chattanooga and Tennessee River Power Company as a young engineer in the early 1900s, Guild helped build Hales Bar Dam, the first dam on the main channel of the Tennessee River and the first hydroelectric dam on a navigable channel in the United States. After his father's death, he helped the company expand, eventually merging it with several other companies to form TEPCO in 1922. Guild served as vice-president of TEPCO throughout the 1920s, and by the time he was named president in 1933, the company was the state's largest electric power company, controlling plants such as Hales Bar Dam, Ocoee dams No. 1 and No. 2, Blue Ridge Dam, and Great Falls Dam. Although eventually forced to sell TEPCO's power division, Guild continued operating the company's streetcar holdings, eventually transforming these holdings into the Southern Coach bus lines.