Internet Is Just Over the Hill for Isolated Town

Off a deserted highway hardly anyone bothers to drive on, they come to the community center in this town technology has left behind.

Young and old, they drive over cattle guards and gravel roads. The owner of the only grocery store is here. So is the school counselor and the librarian from next door. Even 92-year-old Montana Pirtle is here for the big day.

They munch cookies, sip coffee and grin as they wait for the town meeting to begin. The buzz around this hamlet of 350 people is the biggest news to hit since 911 service began a couple of years ago.

Fish Lake Valley is about to get the Internet.

“It’s kind of exciting having the modern world coming into Fish Lake Valley,” says Nancy Knighten, the town’s ambulance coordinator.

This is a town technology has forgotten. Cable television doesn’t exist, cellular phone service is rare. Many here have never been on the Internet; some aren’t even sure what the Internet is.

But whatever it is, they want it. They want to shop on the Web, take classes, do research--explore the world.

“It makes life so much easier,” says Patricia Wright, 63. “Farmers look up what they need for grain, look at cattle markets. Our children are missing out. They get locked in their own little world.”

Cut Off From the Wired World

Four hours northwest of Las Vegas and nestled between mountains on the Nevada-California border, this farming community in south-central Nevada is one of the most rural--and one of the most disconnected--areas in the state.

The post office is in a trailer. So is the coin laundry and the school. There is no bank, no pay-at-the-pump gasoline, no fast-food restaurant. The only place to buy groceries is a store about as big as a gas station. Roads are not paved. “The Boonies” saloon is closed this day; it’s only open a few days a week.

Fish Lake Valley doesn’t even have a lake anymore; it dried up years ago.

Residents only get one television channel unless a satellite beams in the outside world. The community has a primitive 911 service--calls are forwarded to the sheriff’s office in Goldfield, 84 miles a way, and the system can’t tell where a caller is located.

Just about anyone here can tell you where cellular phone service is available: the community center, down by the Esmeralda Market or on a cattle guard at the edge of town. Anywhere else, getting a signal is just pure luck.

But that information is mainly for the few outsiders who happen to venture into this isolated area; most people here don’t have cell phones.

Online Isolation Keenly Felt by Some

Linda Deymonaz moved back to Fish Lake Valley in 1998 from Oregon. Her family has been in this community for decades, and she and her husband own the Esmeralda Market.

“We chose to move to this area, but that doesn’t mean we should have to do without everything,” including the Internet, Deymonaz says. “It doesn’t mean we don’t want to talk to our stockbroker. It doesn’t mean we don’t want to order stuff online.”

Some residents have Internet service, but must make long-distance calls to connect, meaning prohibitive monthly fees that limit use. The town library has the Internet on its three computers, but only one person can connect at a time because the state library system is often too crowded.

So Deymonaz and some other residents started asking around town. Does anyone want local Internet access? Would you be willing to sign up for service?

They made phone calls, wrote letters asking companies for help.

Great Basin Internet in Reno said it would provide service if 40 people would commit to a yearlong service contract. Forty-two people did, paying money for something many knew little about.

But the project hit a glitch last summer when the community’s telephone company, Nevada Bell, realized it would cost $15,000 to trench under the road in front of the Esmeralda Market to install more telephone lines. Deymonaz had volunteered the storeroom above her market to store the Internet equipment.

Great Basin didn’t want to pay. Nevada Bell didn’t either. Residents couldn’t.

“You’re too small for them to hear you,” Deymonaz says.

There were other ways to get service, but Fish Lake Valley never heard about them.

In September, state officials endorsed a deal that required Nevada Bell to spend $1.6 million to improve telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas. Fish Lake Valley didn’t get any of that money. Nevada Bell officials said they didn’t know the community wanted the Internet.

The Internet began more than 30 years ago when government and educational organizations used it so research computers could communicate with each other. But the Internet didn’t become popular with the public until the 1990s, when the World Wide Web was invented. Now, more than half the nation’s households use the Internet.

Most rural areas in the country can get the Internet, but like Fish Lake Valley, they might not have a local connection and costs can be high to set up the needed infrastructure.

“It appears to be a problem the market is having trouble solving,” said Rachel Anderson, managing editor of the Digital Divide Network at the Benton Foundation, which provides information on telecommunication issues.

“In really rural areas a lot of that infrastructure really hasn’t existed. That just compounds the difficulty in trying to get more advanced telecommunication services.”

At the community school--a collection of trailer homes at the end of town--47 students meet in groups of three grades for classes. After eighth grade, students travel 80 miles to Tonopah for high school.

The classrooms have computers but no Internet. To the students, it’s something unknown, something that goes on in a faraway land.

“I’ve been on it before,” Cedric Kirby, 9, boasts. That was at a relative’s house in Los Angeles.

Don Francom, school superintendent, says the Internet would not only help students learn, but give teachers ideas. Teacher Dan Isaac can’t wait. “It’ll be a dream come true,” he said.

The Benton Foundation estimates 97% of schools across the country have access to the Internet. Students who don’t miss out on a better education, Anderson said.

“So much of education and so much of employment is dependent on technology skills,” he said.

At the town meeting, Nevada Bell tells the group the good news: The company has heard the residents’ complaints and is looking at a less expensive alternative to install new lines. Nevada Bell promises to find money for the project, and in a month or more, the Internet will be here.

“Fish Lake Valley has a Christmas present!” Deymonaz says.

Still, some residents, like Nancy Knighten, will remain disconnected. She doesn’t even have a telephone line, and was told it would cost $25,000 to trench a line to her home up on a hill.

When Knighten wants to call someone, she goes to her downstairs guest bedroom and picks up her cellular phone. It sits in the west side of the window sill that faces north, and if she moves, the signal is lost.

“I’d love to have a land line,” Knighten says.

Even more, she’d love to surf the Internet.

“It’d probably be fun.”