Rural Electrification: Power to the People
by Catherine LaineOctober 8th, 2006
Pete sent me some new pictures from the microhydroelectric project at Comunidad Nueva Alianza that really made me think of the rural electrification that was occuring during the New Deal in the United States.
In 1935, President Roosevelt signed an Executive Order authorizing the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) as part of the New Deal Emergency Relief program. The REA’s purpose was to help rural areas and towns with populations under 2,500 to gain access to inexpensive electric lighting and power. At this time, only about 12% of farms in the United States had access to electricity. Thanks in large part to the success of the REA, approximately 98% of all U.S. farms had electric service by the early 1970s.
Read this excerpt from A Science Odyssey: Resources: Companion Book. It gives you just a glimpse of what getting electricity meant to people in rural America.
It starts: “It was the only time I ever saw my grandmother cry…”
