Rural Electrification
Black Township, Somerset County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
In 1936 seventy-five percent of Pennsylvania farms had no electric service. During the next five years, with federal support, 14 consumer-owned cooperatives were formed in this State. Somerset Rural Electric Cooperative, serving four counties in Pennsylvania and one in Maryland, was incorporated on March 14, 1939.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the mid-1930s, three of every four Pennsylvania farms still went dark at sundown, bypassed by private power companies that saw no profit in stringing lines across thinly settled countryside. New Deal support changed that: over five years, consumer-owned cooperatives formed to bring electricity where the market would not, and the Somerset Rural Electric Cooperative was incorporated in March 1939 to serve four Pennsylvania counties and one in Maryland. Neighbors pooled resources to light their own homes and barns.
Why it matters
Rural electrification transformed daily life and farm economies across America, and cooperatives like this one show how federal policy and local self-organization together closed the gap between city and country.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the mid-1930s, much of rural Pennsylvania still went dark at sundown. As of 1936, three out of every four farms in the state had no electric service — no electric lights, no powered pumps, no labor-saving machines that town families were beginning to take for granted.
The reason was economics, not technology. Private power companies made their money stringing lines where customers were dense, and they saw little profit in running wires far across thinly settled countryside. So farms were simply passed by, left on the wrong side of a widening gap between city and country.
Then came the New Deal, and with it federal support aimed squarely at that gap. Over the next five years, that support helped ordinary rural people organize to do what the market had declined to do for them: bring electricity home.
People & events
The instrument of that change was the consumer-owned cooperative — an enterprise owned by the very people it served rather than by distant shareholders. In the space of five years, fourteen such cooperatives were formed across Pennsylvania.
One of them took root here. The Somerset Rural Electric Cooperative was incorporated on March 14, 1939, organized to carry power across four counties in Pennsylvania and one in neighboring Maryland.
Behind that dry fact lies a very human effort. Neighbors pooled their resources and their labor to light their own homes and barns, becoming joint owners of the system that served them. Electrification here was not something handed down from above; it was something rural people built together, with federal backing but local hands.
Its place in the American story
Rural electrification was one of the most far-reaching domestic achievements of the New Deal era. It did more than replace lamps with bulbs — it transformed farm economies and daily life, powering pumps, tools, and eventually the machines that reshaped how farm families lived and worked.
The cooperative model made it possible. Across the country, the same story unfolded: federal policy supplied the means, and local self-organization supplied the will, together closing a gap that private industry had left wide open.
This Somerset County cooperative is one thread in that national fabric. Multiply it by the many cooperatives that spread across rural America in these years, and you have one of the great quiet revolutions of the twentieth century — the moment the countryside caught up to the city in one of the basic conditions of modern life.
If you visit
There is no dramatic monument to look for here, and that is part of the lesson. The real legacy is all around you: the lit farmhouses, barns, and homes of the countryside that a cooperative like this one first reached.
As you stand at the marker, try to picture the same landscape before 1939 — dark after nightfall, its farms bypassed by the power lines that stopped at the edge of town. The change that followed is so complete now that it is easy to forget it ever had to be won.
Fold this stop into a drive through the four-county country the cooperative was built to serve. It rewards a moment's reflection on how much ordinary modern comfort depends on decisions made, and organizations founded, by rural neighbors working together in the 1930s.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Incorporation of Somerset Rural Electric Cooperative (1939)
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Early Bible
Somerset, PA · est. 1954
In 1813, in a log cabin on this spot, printer Charles Frederick Goeb produced what is remembered as the first Bible printed west of the Allegheny Mountains. Getting a printing press — and the paper, type, and skill to run it — across the mountains was no small feat on the early frontier, where books were scarce and precious. A Bible off a local press meant a community had crossed a threshold from raw settlement toward established cultural life.
Quecreek Mine Accident and Rescue
Lincoln Township, PA · est. 2006
On July 28, 2002, the nation held its breath as nine coal miners lay trapped in the flooded Quecreek Mine, entombed underground for four days. A rescue shaft drilled at this spot finally reached them, and all nine were lifted to safety in a drama that drew round-the-clock national attention. The effort drew together local, state, and federal agencies, mining companies, emergency responders, and neighbors, and afterward reshaped mine-safety, mapping, and drilling practices.
Laurel Hill State Park
Jefferson Township, PA · est. 2021
Laurel Hill was one of five Recreational Demonstration Areas the National Park Service created in Depression-era Pennsylvania to reclaim worn land for public use. Between 1935 and 1941, workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration built the roads, cabins, and facilities that turned the site into a place for recreation. Today it is the most intact RDA in the state, still holding examples of every kind of structure the New Deal builders left behind.
Log Grist Mill
Jennerstown, PA · est. 1947
In 1805 a miller named Cronin raised a log grist mill at Roxbury, part of the network of small water-powered mills that ground the grain of frontier Pennsylvania into flour and meal. The mill turned for well over a century, staying in operation until 1918 before its working days ended. Later reconstructed, the sturdy log building found new life as the Mountain Playhouse, preserving a fine example of early American milling.