To qualify for an REA loan, the newly formed Ozarks Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation needed to sign up at least four customers per mile of electrical line. The first 20 members signed up after a meeting in Mount Comfort. Farmers, housewives, country store owners and other residents continued to sign up neighbors through meetings and door-to-door campaigns.
Ozarks Electric's first board of directors.
On May 16, 1938, a group of supporters met to formally establish Ozarks Rural Electric Cooperative Corporation under the federal Rural Electrification Act, which provided low-interest loans to cooperative electric power companies to bring electricity to rural parts of America. Seven signatures were placed on the articles of incorporation submitted to the Arkansas secretary of state. Signing themselves into the history books that day were Edna Henbest of Mount Comfort, Harry Goforth of Fayetteville, C.D. Griscom of Lincoln, J.D. Easley of Crosses, Shannon Pharr of Morrow, F.E. Perkins of Springdale and A.H. Berry of Hindsville in Madison County.
Ozarks workers building power lines.
The first 50-mile section was energized on May 10, 1939, starting at the home of S.T. Cantrell of Tontitown. Cantrell and his wife, Juanita, provided land on their farm between Springdale and Tontitown to build Ozarks Electric’s first substation. Properties in northwestern Washington County, including Harmon, Elm Springs, Stony Point, Wheeler, Mount Comfort and Meadow Valley were incrementally energized that first day. Crews built and energized 224 miles of line those first three months, bringing electricity to 750 members of the co-op.
By July 1940, residents in Adair and Cherokee counties in Oklahoma recruited 207 new members, and Ozarks Electric was approved for an REA loan to extend its lines into northeastern Oklahoma. Ozarks Rural Electric Cooperative members voted to drop the “Rural” from its name in 1962 to become Ozarks Electric Cooperative Corporation.
Present Day
Ozarks continued growing, and now has offices in Fayetteville and Springdale in Arkansas and Stilwell and Westville in Oklahoma. We serve more than 92,000 homes, farms, businesses and industries across parts of nine counties: Washington, Madison, Benton, Franklin and Crawford in Arkansas and Adair, Cherokee, Sequoyah and Delaware in Oklahoma.
In 2016, we launched a new company, OzarksGo, to provide high-speed fiber internet, TV and phone to our members, in the same spirit we brought electricity to communities unserved by investor-owned utilities.
