The socialist decades gave the town its modern shape. The first panel housing blocks went up between 1959 and 1965, and the old base — state forestry, sawmilling, joinery — was joined by an electrical works making telephone and telecommunications equipment. Up the Belá valley at Pribylina the open-air Museum of the Liptov Village was created largely to rescue buildings from the villages that the Liptovská Mara reservoir was about to drown, including a whole church rebuilt there from the fittings of the flooded village of Liptovská Mara. And in 1981 the Čierny Váh pumped-storage power station came on line up the valley to the south-east: 735 MW, the most powerful hydroelectric plant in Slovakia, with its upper reservoir on the karst plateau of Vyšné Sokoly at 1,160 metres and the lower one in the valley at 733. It works like a battery made of a mountain — water is pumped up when electricity is cheap and let back down through the turbines when demand peaks.Socialistické desaťročia dali mestu jeho dnešnú podobu. Prvé panelové domy vyrástli v rokoch 1959 – 1965 a k starému základu — štátnym lesom, píliteľstvu a stolárstvu — pribudol elektrotechnický závod vyrábajúci telefónnu a telekomunikačnú techniku. V doline Belej v Pribyline vzniklo Múzeum liptovskej dediny, a to najmä preto, aby zachránilo stavby z obcí, ktoré mala zatopiť Liptovská Mara; postavili tam aj celý kostol zo zariadenia zatopenej obce Liptovská Mara. A v roku 1981 spustili v doline na juhovýchode prečerpávaciu vodnú elektráreň Čierny Váh: 735 MW, najvýkonnejšia vodná elektráreň na Slovensku, s hornou nádržou na krasovej plošine Vyšné Sokoly vo výške 1 160 metrov a dolnou v doline vo výške 733 metrov. Funguje ako batéria vyrobená z hory — voda sa v čase lacnej elektriny prečerpáva hore a v špičke sa púšťa cez turbíny späť dolu.
