Rawolle decided to generate his own electricity when he learned that bringing transmission lines to his farm from the city of New London, about away, would be virtually impossible. At a cost of about one million dollars, extremely expensive at the time for a single project, a hydroelectric system was completed in 1922. Airplanes flying from New York to Boston used the glimmering lights of Fairy Lake Farm as guidance. Rawolle also opened a store in New London to sell produce from the farm. This endeavor collapsed, however, when the stock market crashed in 1929 and Rawolle lost all of his money. He died in 1954; the large stone mansion he lived in at the farm is still standing at the end of Horse Pond Road, though it is abandoned.