Farmers Electric Cooperative

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt created something called the Rural Electrification Administration, the REA, with one mission: get electricity out to rural America. And out here in Hunt County and the counties around it, that meant everything.

Because up to that point, a whole lot of folks were living without it. Federal funding started flowing, small electric cooperatives began to appear, and slowly, those little cooperatives found their way to each other. Eventually they merged into something bigger, a tri-county cooperative that took the name Farmers Electric.

Now here's the moment worth savoring. September 14, 1938. The first fifty miles of lines were energized.

Fifty miles of wire humming to life, and at the end of all that effort: one hundred and one customers with power. Not a thousand. One hundred and one.

But those one hundred and one households, they were the proof that it could be done. Give it one year. Just one year.

More than eight hundred customers had power. Eight hundred families who could now light a room without a lantern, who could live a little simpler and a little safer inside their own homes. And remember, none of this was happening in easy times.

The depression was still sitting heavy on people. Money was tight, doubt was cheap, and yet the membership kept growing, because the need and the desire for electricity were stronger than the hardship. But here's the thing the marker wants you to hold onto.

Farmers Electric wasn't just about kilowatts and copper wire. It was a community. Neighbors and friends, bound together by something as simple and as powerful as a shared line running through the dark.

What the marker says

In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) to fund the expansion of electricity to rural America. With federal funding, small electric cooperatives began to appear in the area, eventually merging into a larger tri-county cooperative called Farmers Electric. The first 50 miles of lines were energized on September 14, 1938, supplying power to 101 customers. After one year, more than 800 customers had power which allowed for a simplified and safer home. Despite the difficult financial time during the depression, the need and desire for electricity meant a growing membership for the cooperative. This not only included electricity, but also a community of neighbors and friends.