How Arkansas’ Electric Cooperatives Keep the American Dream Lit
I still remember America’s 1976 Bicentennial celebration. I was 8 years old and the flags, fireworks and overall excitement were special enough to have made a deep impression on me. Now 50 years later, as we mark another significant milestone in our great nation’s history, I think I am more excited than I was back in 1976. I fully intend to make this year’s fireworks show something special with the help of my friends at Torpedo Joe’s in Little Rock and Coleman’s Fireworks in Mountain Home. These guys never let me down, and I am certain that my neighbors who always turn out to watch the show would agree.
This July 4, the United States will officially be 250 years old, a massive milestone, officially dubbed the Semiquincentennial. It is a word so long and linguistically challenging that it sounds like the name of a new pharmaceutical product. Fortunately, as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we can just call it America250.
When the 56 brave, albeit heavily perspiring, delegates signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they risked it all. They envisioned a land of liberty, justice and modern marvels. However, if you told Thomas Jefferson that one day Americans would celebrate this independence by communicating, connecting and trading with people all over the world on glowing rectangles powered by invisible currents, he would have thought you were crazy. The American experiment succeeded because the foundational spark of liberty was eventually backed up by a very literal spark: electricity. To truly understand how the promise of 1776 transformed into the reality of 2026, we must look at Arkansas and the cooperative movement that brought the countryside out of the dark ages and into the light.
To comprehend how far we have come, we must remember where we came from. When the nation was born, Arkansas was mostly a vast, untamed expanse of the Louisiana Territory, populated by Native Americans and a handful of European settlers. By the time the nation celebrated its 150th birthday, things in the big cities were booming. Skyscrapers were climbing, businesses were expanding, and electricity was powering it all. Rural Arkansas, however, was experiencing a vastly different reality. In the early 1930s, if you lived in downtown Little Rock, you could flip a switch and enjoy the magic of electricity. But move just a few miles outside city limits, into the rolling hills of the Ozarks or the flat expanses of the Delta, and you were essentially living in 1776.
As late as 1940, out of a population of nearly 2 million Arkansans, only a fraction had electricity. Most rural families still relied on wood-burning stoves, kerosene lamps and muscle power. Water was hauled from wells by hand, and reading after sunset required a flickering candle. For commercial power companies, running miles of expensive copper wire out to a handful of remote farms simply was not profitable. Rural America was being left in the dark, stranded on the wrong side of progress.
The spark that lit the fire and eventually rural America came in 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the New Deal, which included funding for rural electrification. Soon after, Arkansas Gov. Carl E. Bailey cleared the legislative path for local citizens to take matters into their own hands.
The solution was not a corporate buyout; it was the electric cooperative. Electric cooperatives are a uniquely American ideal. They are democratic, member-owned and not-for-profit. In 1937, the very first rural electric cooperative utility pole in Arkansas was hammered into the soil by First Electric Cooperative in Jacksonville. Imagine the scene: neighbors banding together, pooling their meager Depression-era resources and physically digging holes to string wire across the state. They were not waiting for a handout; they were building their own future, pole by pole.
By 1942, local cooperatives in Arkansas joined forces to create the statewide association known as Arkansas Electric Cooperatives, Inc. (AECI). When the lights finally came on across rural Arkansas, it was nothing short of a second revolution. Refrigerators replaced root cellars. Electric pumps replaced hand cranks. For the first time, rural Arkansans could participate fully in the American dream of modern progress. It proved that in America, power belongs to the people — both politically and electromagnetically.
Fast forward to 2026, and the transformation is staggering. Today, the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas maintain infrastructure that spans over 60% of the state’s land area. Cooperatives power everything from massive agricultural operations to high-tech manufacturing and steel production to local businesses and suburban homes. To celebrate this journey, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders established the Arkansas250 Commission to coordinate the state’s official Semiquincentennial festivities. The initiative celebrates Arkansas’ role in the national celebration and promotes civic engagement, spotlights unsung heroes and encourages community giving. Arkansans are honoring the milestone with a fantastic lineup of events, which are part of the cover story (see page 8).
An event as big as America250 forces us to look forward to the future. Just as the original co-op pioneers adapted to the challenges of the 1930s, today’s electric cooperatives are innovating for the future. They are investing heavily in power generation, transmission and distribution systems to ensure the grid remains reliable and affordable. They are also bridging the digital divide. Through major fiber-optic broadband expansions, Arkansas co-ops are currently bringing high-speed internet to the same rural communities they first electrified nearly a century ago.
So, as we watch the fireworks burst across the sky this July Fourth, take a moment to look around at all the things electricity has brought us. Electricity revolutionized the American home, reducing hours of labor that had largely fallen to women. For those who also have rural broadband brought to you by your local electric cooperative, reflect upon the fact that this connection also ensures that you are not left behind as America moves forward toward its Tricentennial (300th) anniversary.
America is an unfinished story, powered by everyday people who refuse to stay in the dark. The founding fathers gave us the blueprint for liberty, but it was the gritty, cooperative spirit of Americans that kept that brilliant vision lit for 250 glorious years.
Happy Birthday, America! Let’s keep the power on.