History

Wells Rural Electric Company is a member-owned, non-profit cooperative incorporated in 1958 to obtain central station power for the rural areas around Wells. A board of directors was formed and Robert Wright, a rancher in Clover Valley, was elected president.

In 1959, the cooperative secured a Rural Electrification Administration (REA) loan, reached an agreement to purchase wholesale power from Idaho Power Company and purchased Wells Power Company. WREC officially began serving 583 customers in June of 1960.

In 1961, WREC acquired the Wendover Power Company with the aid of an REA loan, which also brought central station power to the Jiggs/Lee area located south of Elko, Nevada, pushing the number of WREC accounts to 824.

Nearly 20 years later, in 1979, WREC purchased the City of Carlin’s municipal power plant and began providing electric service to that community, increasing WREC’s membership to 2,430.

On February 4, 1986, residents in Pine Valley, south of Carlin, received Wells Rural Electric service for the first time, bringing the cooperative’s number of total active accounts to 3,800.