Telluride Takes Joyride on Information Superhighway : Colorado: The old mining town may be 130 miles from the nearest interstate highway, sponsors say, but it’s on the road to progress.

When Jake Burns’ friends leave town he keeps in touch by e-mail, and when he needs to do a school report on what’s left of war-torn Yugoslavia, he contacts people there over the Internet computer network.

The high school junior can do it all without calling long-distance because Telluride has “InfoZone.”

“I e-mail other friends to see if I can find any cheap stockbrokers for friends here,” said Burns, 17, who has had his own computer “since first or second grade” and has given up his supermarket job to run Telluride Ski Co.’s computer system on weekends.

The nonprofit Telluride Institute oversees the 6-month-old “InfoZone” project linking computer users with Internet without having to call long-distance.

A sparsely populated resort town 130 miles from the nearest interstate highway, Telluride is an unlikely stop on the information superhighway. It is an old mining town with 1,500 year-round residents, surrounded by 13,000-foot peaks in the San Juan Mountains and 275 miles southwest of Denver.

“We want to be a special little place, a society that matches the scenery,” said Richard Lowenberg, the InfoZone chief at the Telluride Institute.

Besides having access to Internet, computer buffs soon will be testing a wireless telephone system using newly deregulated communications frequencies to tap into information systems. It will help alleviate the shortage of telephone lines created by the town’s growing faster than expected.

In addition, by the end of the year the local cable television system will be set up for interactive television, offering services ranging from entertainment choices to communications via cable lines.

InfoZone sponsors say few places are better suited to test new ideas--70% of the population have college degrees. The town has so many scientific conferences and art and music festivals that one weekend is devoted to a “Nothing Festival.” Last year, an “Ideas Festival” was held.

Gov. Roy Romer was pushing for high-tech development on Colorado’s Front Range corridor when Lowenberg and others persuaded him to consider Western Slope areas also.

A $20,000 state grant paid for establishment of a “node” on the Internet system last summer. The state is leasing a data line for residents so they can bypass commercial access systems that require long-distance calls and can cost $15 an hour or more.

Apple Computers Inc. donated computers that are stationed around the town in the library, museum, clinic and schools.

It’s not a scheme for subsidizing the local nest of “Lone Eagles,” telecommuters who took their jobs with them to the rural West. There are an estimated 10 million scattered throughout the nation’s resorts, countryside and small communities, according to Denver’s Center for the New West. They communicate with their home offices in the city by fax, personal computer and telephone.

Former Mayor Peter Spencer, a computer programmer by profession, said people have been making a living here by modem and fax for a decade and do not need outside help.

Lowenberg, a former artist and planner who worked in California’s Silicon Valley, said the project’s goal is to empower this rural area by making information readily available. Some see that as a key in a community whose rapid growth has led some to call for a six-month moratorium on new construction.

Along the same line, Greg Law, who is on the InfoZone board, has created an audio-text service that allows callers to get information on town affairs. That can include the upcoming town council agenda, faxed for free simply by phoning into an automated answering service.

Lowenberg, who said the institute will monitor use of the new information system, said that ultimately multidimensional drawings of projects, such as the proposed expansion of Telluride ski area, could be delivered to residents’ homes.

Allen Rowath, a New York expert on network systems, said the Telluride project is “exciting because it means getting better participation in the community.”

Rowath helped set up the InfoZone after being drawn to Telluride by a conversation with Mary-Chapin Carpenter after a folk-music concert.

“It also opens the door for more interactive government. I don’t know if everyone in government wants this or not because it arms people with more information,” Rowath said.

“Here in Syracuse,” he said, “you can learn who died in a car wreck, but not how your senators voted.”