REC Guthrie Co Rural Electric Cooperative Assn

Guthrie County REC has been bringing electricity to rural Iowa for over 75 years. It is hard to believe, that in the 1930’s, nearly 90 percent of the urban dwellers had electricity, compared to only ten percent of the rural population. Private utility companies, who supplied electric power to most of the nation's consumers, argued that it was too expensive to string electric lines to isolated rural farmers. In 1935, under the Roosevelt Administration, the Rural Electric Administration (REA) was created to bring electricity to rural areas like the remote counties in Iowa.