George W. Norris House

In the small southwest Nebraska city of McCook stands the home of one of the most consequential legislators in American history. George Norris served forty years in Washington, ten in the House, thirty in the Senate, and he used that tenure to reshape the nation's relationship with electricity and public power.

Norris was the chief architect of the Tennessee Valley Authority, created in nineteen thirty-three to bring electricity and flood control to one of the poorest regions of the American South. He also championed the Rural Electrification Administration, which powered farms across the country, and authored the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution. A Republican who bucked his party repeatedly on behalf of ordinary Americans, he was named by the Senate in nineteen fifty-seven as one of the five greatest senators in United States history. His McCook house, built in eighteen ninety-nine, became a National Historic Landmark in nineteen sixty-seven and is preserved and furnished mainly with items that belonged to the Norris family.