May 11, 1935 was one of the greatest days for those living in rural areas across America. This was the day President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order (EO) creating the Rural Electrification Administration (REA).
A year later, Congress passed the Electric Cooperative Corporation Act, which allowed states to adopt and enable the formation and operation of not-for-profit, consumer-owned electric cooperatives.
Before this, life on farms and ranches was harsh. The only lights were candles or kerosene lamps. Some farms and ranches had wind chargers and huge nonefficient batteries or generators and power plants.
There wasn’t any refrigeration, unless families had a cellar close to the house or an ice house with blocks of ice cut during the winter and stored under straw or coal dust.
Cattle were worth two cents a pound, and sheep were a penny and a half. I don’t think it was much in those days, although I don’t know if that’s true or not.
In the early days, Roosevelt wanted to use this EO to loan existing electrical companies funds to provide rural electricity, but they balked at that and didn’t want the government providing funds to a customer-owned nonprofits either.
But loan applications from rural-based cooperatives were pouring in, and the REA soon realized electric cooperatives would be the entities to make rural electrification a reality.
Cooperatives around the country started utilizing these low interest loans, and before long, they began repaying the government back sooner than expected.
The cooperatives proved to existing electrical companies that were powering cities and towns that they were wrong. These cooperatives brought new life to farms, ranches and rural dwellers.
Housewives didn’t have to heat irons on the stove and had refrigeration to keep food fresh. Everyone could read at night and listen to the radio without running their batteries down.
Farmers and ranchers were discarding troublesome windmills and putting electrical pumps in the ground to provide running water in the house, barn and corrals. These water wells also opened thousands of acres of grazing for livestock and wildlife.
The Wyrulec Company was the first rural electric cooperative in Wyoming and will celebrate 90 years in service this year. Fourteen more cooperatives followed around the state. There is a state board chosen from these cooperatives, and each cooperative elects a board from its members.
As with 90 years ago, REAs are built and governed from the bottom up.
The largest growth of America’s cooperatives came within four years after World War II. The number of rural electric cooperatives doubled and the number of consumers connected with REA electricity more than tripled. The miles of energized line grew more than five times.
By 1953, more than 90 percent of U.S. farms and ranches had rural electricity. Back then, a mile of powerline cost close to $1,000 to build.
Today, about 99 percent of rural areas have electric service, and REA is now known as the Rural Utilities Service, existing under the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
I still have the memory of finally getting REA electricity. The linemen were hooking up the new powerline to the meter, and when they finished, they flipped on the breakers and told me to run to the house to see if it had got there. It had.
Dennis Sun is the publisher of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup, a weekly agriculture newspaper available online and in print.
