Celebrating PEC’s 80th anniversary!
Investor-owned utilities said there wasn’t enough profit in extending electric line to the Texas Hill Country in the 1930s, that it couldn’t be done. Our early community leaders took that as a challenge.
On May 19, 1938, newly-elected Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson and representatives from Blanco, Burnet, Gillespie, Hays and Llano counties met in Austin to sign an official document incorporating a “Pedernales Electric Cooperative.” LBJ, area rancher E. Babe Smith and Burnet druggist Roy Fry would later meet in Fry’s Rexall Drug Store to discuss signing up PEC’s first members. The men sat on overturned packing crates, interrupting their conversation so Fry could wait on customers.
From this humble, grassroots beginning came a transformation that bettered the lives of the region’s people and laid the backbone for the development of today’s thriving communities. We’re proud to say we were formed by the members we’ve continued to serve for 80 years. For us, you’ll always come first.