Lighting the Farm: Sullivan County's Electric Cooperative

In nineteen thirty-six, most Pennsylvania farms still had no electricity. Kerosene lamps, hand pumps, and wood stoves remained the reality for hundreds of thousands of rural families, even as city dwellers had enjoyed electric light for half a century.

Franklin Roosevelt's Rural Electrification Administration changed that. Under the federal program, consumer-owned cooperatives formed across the state, pooling resources to string lines where private utilities refused to go because the math didn't pencil out.

Here in Sullivan County, the Sullivan County Rural Electric Cooperative was incorporated in nineteen thirty-six, one of many such cooperatives launched in Pennsylvania in those years. It served members in Sullivan County and nearby areas, bringing refrigerators, electric milking machines, and reliable light to farms that the market had written off.

The cooperative model put ownership in the hands of the people it served, and many of those organizations are still running today.