Bringing electricity to rural residents on the Great Plains was an engineering, geographic, and management challenge. Electric cooperatives were formed and used low interest loans from the government to build the electric lines. The REA dropped off poles at a farm, and farmers could earn a little money by digging holes themselves.
The REA in Nebraska wired the first York County farmhouse in 1941 at a cost of $224.50. Gresham, NE had electricity since 1908, but it wasn't until 1939 that the REA started to connect electricity for houses in rural Gresham. "When they first started putting some of these lines out, they would drop the poles along the section lines," he says. "Farmers, if they wanted to, could make 25 cents a hole by digging the hole." But there were no machine-driven augers to dig holes, and workers had to dig deep holes with a spade in the drought-hardened ground.
The Perennial Public Power District (formerly York County Rural Public Power District) was formed on December 31, 1938. In January 1939, the board of directors passed a resolution to borrow $271,000 from the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) in Washington, D.C. to construct electrical lines in York County. Soon after the district was formed, engineers and a construction company were hired to build the lines.
In September 1939, the district purchased electric power from the Seward County Rural Public Power District. By early February 1940, the Perennial Public Power District announced that 130 miles of lines had been completed, and 118 customers were now receiving electricity. By 1945, the district had completed nearly 250 miles of electric line and connected more than 500 rural customers.
The process of organizing power districts like Perennial was often a difficult political process. Most rural families had to be convinced that is was necessary to pay for electricity.
