Recognized as one of the fathers of hydroelectric power, he was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal during his lifetime and is an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

In 1860, after the gold strikes in the nearby Sierra Nevada he relocated to Camptonville—near the Yuba River and the California Mother Lode country—where he made his living as a millwright and carpenter.

[6] Pelton's ideas for improving the turbine water wheel came from his studies of mining equipment and operations in California's gold rush country.

Stern reports: "According to a 1939 article by W. F. Durand of Stanford University in Mechanical Engineering, Pelton's invention started from an accidental observation some time in the 1870s.

At that time the Knight Foundry wheel was being sold as the industry standard, but in a head-to-head competition staged in 1883 at the Idaho Mine in nearby Grass Valley, Pelton's design proved much more efficient.

[citation needed] In 1895, the largest installation of Pelton's wheel during his lifetime was accomplished at the North Star Mine Powerhouse, Grass Valley, California, by the engineer Arthur De Wint Foote, who designed and installed an over-sized wheel of 30 feet diameter; it performed successfully, greatly increasing the hydropower delivered by the Pelton runners to produce compressed air for mining operations.

[citation needed] Pelton died in California at the age of seventy-eight and is interred at his family cemetery site in Vermilion, Ohio.

[7] In 1958, the actor William Hudson was cast as Pelton in the episode "Wheel of Fortune" on the syndicated television anthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews.