On March 15, 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke over the radio from the White House to 600 people gathered in the Fort Randall power house and then tapped a Western Union key to signal Governor Sigurd Anderson to start the generators.  Anderson spun the giant turbine, and the dam’s first generator began producing electricity.

By June 30, 1956, the Omaha District Engineer reported that the Fort Randall project was 99 percent complete at a cost of $183 million, almost 2.5 times as much as the original cost estimate.  Within the preceding 12 months, the dam’s generators had produced more than 1 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.  By the early 1970s, the dam was producing over 2 billion kilowatt-hours of electric power annually.