Rural Electrification: Pennsylvania's Farm Co-ops

As late as nineteen thirty-six, most Pennsylvania farms had no electricity. Kerosene lanterns lit the barns. Hand pumps pulled the water.

That changed when the federal Rural Electrification Administration began backing consumer-owned cooperatives. Within five years, Pennsylvania farmers had organized many such co-ops. Southwest Central Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation, incorporated in the late nineteen thirties, was one of them, eventually serving customers across several counties in western Pennsylvania.

These cooperatives were not government agencies. They were farmer-owned utilities, built on the idea that rural communities could wire themselves if given affordable federal loans. The model worked.

By the early nineteen forties, the lines were going up, and farm life across the state was transformed.