First Rural Electric Cooperative

The cooperative nearly stalled before a pole went up. The Rural Electrification Administration first turned down the Burbank organizers, then calling themselves the Fairview Electric Association, because too few farmers had signed, and they went back through Clay and Union counties for members. Power began flowing through 67 miles of line in October 1937. Stan Jensen, raised on a dairy farm northeast of Vermillion, remembered homework finished before dark because kerosene lamps were too dim to read by, a battery radio dying during a Joe Louis fight, and the moment a bare ceiling bulb came on.

What the plaque says

First Rural Electric Cooperative On November 25, 1935, 17 farmers from Clay and Union counties held an historic meeting at the Manning/O'Connor store in Burbank, three miles south of this spot. Their purpose was to form a consumer-owned corporation which would allow the rural residents of this portion of southeastern South Dakota to provide themselves with central station electric service. At that meeting Clay- Union Electric, the first rural electric cooperative in South Dakota, was formed. The establishment of Clay-Union Electric was made possible when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 7037, creating the Rural Elec- trification Administration (REA), on May 11., 1935.. At the time nearly 90 per cent of rural America was without electricity. The creation of REA was the first step in achieving a dream, shared by all rural Americans....to have the convenience of electricity in their homes. Obtaining that dream was not simple, but thanks to financial backing by REA, 99 per cent of rural America is now electrified. One thousand RECs serve 20,000,000 people nationwide. And in South Dakota, 33 RECs serve over 200,000 people. This marker was erected May 11, 1985, by the member cooperatives of the S.D. Rural Electric Association and the S.D. Historical Society, to commemorate the signing of E.O. 7037. It is dedicated to the 17 founders of Clay-Union Electric, President Roosevelt and the thousands of unnamed individuals who struggled to bring electricity into the countryside.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Music Museum — 5.0 mi
  One of the great collections of musical instruments in the world, on a college campus in a prairie town, built around a band teacher's thousands of horns, fiddles and curiosities.
• Spirit Mound Historic Prairie — 9.0 mi
  A lone hill north of Vermillion that Lewis and Clark walked to on a scorching day in 1804, now one of the few places left where you can stand exactly where they stood.
• Ponca State Park — 15 mi
  Oak ravines and bluffs at the downstream end of the Missouri's last unchannelized reach in Nebraska, with a three-state overlook and the river's resource and education center.

More markers nearby

• Bruyer Church — 1.1 mi
• First Permanent Schoolhouse in Dakota Territory — 5.3 mi
• Grand Officers — 5.3 mi
• Andrew Lee — 5.4 mi