Prior to 1940, only a few areas in Jackson and Marshall Counties – mostly in cities and towns – had electricity. Rural customers were still cooking on wood stoves, heating with fireplaces and reading with coal-oil lamps. When President Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act, creating REA, on May 11, 1935, doors began to creep open to a brighter world. Large power companies said providing power to rural areas was too costly and too dangerous, that the farmers would not be able to pay their electric bills and the cost of extending electrical lines into rural areas would be prohibitive. Because no one else was willing to serve the rural areas, leaders from across Jackson and Marshall Counties organized a member owned cooperative and thus North Alabama Electric Cooperative was born.