For the first three decades of the 20th century, much of Oklahoma was “dark land,” the term government officials used in surveys and studies to describe unelectrified areas. Night fell heavily on farms and ranches and tiny crossroads communities, where people relied on candles and coal oil lamps for lighting.

In 1925, when Oklahoma Gas & Electric Company conducted a small rural electrification experiment near Pauls Valley in the south- central part of the Sooner State, less than four percent of farms and ranches had lights. Dust storms and the Depression added to the social and economic misery many rural Oklahomans experienced for the rest of the decade and into the next.

Perhaps that explains why civic-minded farmers were quick to jump on the opportunity presented by the federal Rural Electrification Act of 1936. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the bill into law on May 20, and on Oct. 1, Cimarron Electric Cooperative in Kingfisher became the first co-op in the state to receive a loan from the Rural Electrification Administration. Cimarron Electric energized its first line the following year.

The next REA loans went to Kay Electric Cooperative in Blackwell (Oct. 20, 1936), Oklahoma Electric Cooperative in Norman (Nov. 13, 1936), Alfalfa Electric Cooperative in Cherokee (Feb. 6, 1937); East Central Oklahoma Electric Cooperative in Okmulgee (March 23, 1937), Red River Valley Rural Electric Association in Marietta (March 24, 1937); Southwest Rural Electric Association in Tipton (Nov. 22, 1937); and People’s Electric Cooperative in Ada (Feb. 18, 1938).

By July 1938, REA had loaned $2.5 million to nine co-ops. By the end of 1939 the totals were $6 million and 16 co-ops for the construction of 6,200 miles of lines.

Oklahoma Electric, originally Oklahoma Inter-County Electric Cooperative, was organized by farmers in two counties in the center of the state, Cleveland and McClain. Line construction began in May 1938 and by the end of the year, the distribution system had built more than 260 miles of line and was delivering electricity to the homes and businesses of 428 members.

Board President E.E. “Doc Hardin hosted a “Turning On” party the day the first line was energized. The line crew had worked from dawn to dusk six days a week for months and spent many nights sleeping in pastures. That anecdote in preserved on Oklahoma Electric’s website.

Kay Electric built 700 miles of distribution line between May 1937 and December 1941, when the U.S. entered World War II and line construction materials became almost impossible to obtain unless a co-op could document that crops grown by its members were needed to feed the troops overseas.

Kay Electric qualified. And later, it procured even more materials to relocate a substation and build a line to serve an internment camp for prisoners of war near Tonkawa—a Department of War project.

East Central Oklahoma Electric Cooperative lighted the dark land around Okmulgee. For some of the early members it was a transcendent experience. Years later, the son of a member put it this way: “My father cried the night we got electric power on the homeplace. He didn’t want to go to bed. He sat at the kitchen table with his bible under that bulb and read for hours. We thought the light bulb was a miracle.”

People’s Electric began in 1938 as Interstate Cooperative Electric and Power Company when a group of 10 men sold 2,000 $5 shares of stock door-to-door in rural areas near Ada, Okla. It was converted to a not-for-profit membership corporation with its current name the following year after receiving a $135,000 loan from REA to build 125 miles of distribution line in Coal, Hughes, and Pontotoc counties.