Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Rural Arkansas Turns 50

November marks the 50th anniversary of Rural Arkansas, a magazine that finds its way into more homes in Arkansas than any other publication of its type.

It is published by Arkansas Electric Cooperatives, Inc. (AECI) for the membership of each of the 17 electric distribution cooperatives in the state.

In its fifty years of existence, the magazine has grown from a small black and white publication with a circulation of only 19,000 to a glossy full color publication that reaches into 290,000 homes, offices and businesses.

Orginally only an eight-page edition, today's regular edition is 32-pages long.

This magazine was first called Arkansas REA News, and was devoted to helping build Arknasas by providing informatin to an ever-growing membership about the benefits and uses of electricity. In that capacity, Ouida Cox, editor, and the original editor, Ed H. Thomas, promoted electricity as "the most flexible source of power and labor yet conceived."

Another principle espoused in the original issue stated: "We shall continue an aggressive policy for the electrification of Arkansas until every farm home shall have available to it abundant electric energy at the lowest possible ratae."

That project -- complete electrification of every area of Arkansas, was accomplished, in part, by those who helped spread the word through Rural Arkansas magazine.

Each month Cox and Thomas covered meetings and wrote articles about growing cooperatives all over the state as they worked to spread the word for the electric cooperatives in Arkansas.

While editors of the magazine have never seen themselves as such, they filled much the same roll as early chambers of commerce and industrial development agencies. They told a message of achievement and progress as they led, often years ahead others, with a message hope for a better future for everyone.

Electric cooperatives now serve over 60 percent of the land area of Arkansas and furnish dependable, efficient electric service to homes, farms and businesses in almost every area of the state.

While the look of Rural Arkansas magazine is quite different from its early days, the spirit and the desire to serve the electric cooperatives of Arkansas burns no less brightly than it did fifty years ago.