The project began in 1963, when the Liberian government secured a World Bank loan to develop a $24.3 million hydroelectric facility on the Saint Paul River, about 21 miles northeast of Monrovia. Construction started in 1964 under the Monrovia Power Authority, with Raymond Concrete Pile Company as contractor and Stanley Consultants managing the work. By 1967, the facility was operational and christened the T. J. R. Faulkner W.F. Walker Hydroelectric Power Station. It was a run-of-the-river dam -- meaning it relied on the natural flow of the Saint Paul rather than impounding a reservoir -- and before the war it generated 64 megawatts, roughly 35 percent of all electricity produced in Liberia. The Liberia Water and Sewer Corporation also used the facility to supply drinking water to Monrovia and surrounding communities, making Mount Coffee the single most important piece of infrastructure in the country.

When Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia swept through the countryside in 1990, Mount Coffee was an obvious target. Controlling the dam meant controlling Monrovia's lifeline. Rebel forces seized the facility, and the intake dam was destroyed on one end. Over the years of conflict that followed, the plant was systematically looted -- turbines stripped, equipment hauled away, buildings gutted. The Second Liberian Civil War inflicted further damage. By the time peace finally held, Mount Coffee was a ruin standing in a river that still flowed with the same force it always had, generating nothing.

Rebuilding Mount Coffee became a test of Liberia's capacity to recover. In 2007, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency provided $400,000 to study the feasibility of restoration. Engineers found the dam's main structure sound but the surrounding facilities devastated, with an estimated repair cost of $383 million -- an enormous sum for one of the world's poorest nations. The Liberian government considered privatization but ultimately pursued international partnerships. In April 2013, contracts were signed with Norwegian firm Norplan AS and German firm Fichtner GmbH to lead the rehabilitation. The work drew support from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the European Investment Bank, and the German development bank KfW.

In December 2016, the first of four new turbines was dedicated and commissioned, each with a capacity of 22 megawatts. The full rehabilitation was completed in 2018, bringing the plant's total installed capacity to 88 MW -- more than doubling Liberia's entire power-generating capability. The project was expected to supply electricity to 460,000 people. For a country where the civil wars had reduced electrification to near zero, the humming turbines of Mount Coffee represented something larger than kilowatts. The Saint Paul still flows without a reservoir, and the dam still runs with the river rather than against it. What changed was everything around it -- a nation that had to rebuild not just a power plant but the very idea that infrastructure could serve its people rather than be turned against them.