Although Bartlett had regular electric service by 1905, farmers in the surrounding rural area did not receive electricity until thirty years later. On May 11, 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Rural Electrification Administration as part of his New Deal emergency relief program. Created to bring electricity to rural America, the REA also became a lending agency to help finance such projects. In 1935, the REA lent $33,000 to the Bartlett Community Light & Power Company. Later known as the Bartlett Electric Cooperative, the company built a 59-mile power line to serve the rural areas surrounding Bartlett. The first section of the line, intended to serve 110 farm homes, became operative in March 1936. Power came from the city’s municipal light plant, built two years earlier. As the first REA project in Texas and the first in the nation to be energized under an REA loan, the Bartlett Electric Cooperative played an important role in the modernization of area farms.