Johnson City helped shape Lyndon Johnson, and he in turn helped shape the town’s modern face. Buildings throughout the town reflect his effort to ease hardships he had known there in his youth. The former LBJ Hospital, now the park visitor center, is one example. The white stone building to the right of the boyhood home serves as headquarters of the Pedernales Electric Cooperative, one of Lyndon Johnson’s most important contributions to the people of the Texas hill country. During the summer of 1938, as a freshman congressman, he campaigned hard for rural electrification and persuaded wary farmers and ranchers that the cost was worth ending hand-pumped water, hand-washed laundry, and red-hot cook stoves. In 1939, electricity reached thousands of hill country residents for the first time.