Rural Electrification: Light Comes to the Pennsylvania Farm

In nineteen thirty-six, three out of four Pennsylvania farms still had no electric service. Kerosene lamps lit the kitchens, iceboxes kept the food, and hand pumps drew the water. That began to change when the Federal Rural Electrification Administration, established by executive order in nineteen thirty-five, started backing consumer-owned electric cooperatives across the country.

In northeastern Pennsylvania, fourteen farm families and local leaders came together to form the Claverack Rural Electric Cooperative, incorporated on October twenty-fourth, nineteen thirty-six. Within a few years Claverack was stringing lines across eight counties, bringing electricity to farms that private utilities had declared too sparse and too remote to be profitable. The rural electrification movement transformed American farm life more profoundly than almost any other New Deal program, replacing hand labor with electric motors, refrigerators, radios, and eventually running water, almost overnight.