BAYFIELD — There’s a digital dead zone in Fire Chief Bruce Evans’ 282-square-mile district in southwest Colorado, right up where the Upper Pine River Fire Protection District brushes against wildland and national forest. No cell coverage. No internet access. Even the radio goes quiet. For Sean Caffrey, at the Crested Butte fire department, signal cuts […]
Southwest Colorado Council of Governments
Posted inNews
“Glorified homelessness”: Even tiny Silverton is experiencing the housing crisis that’s crushing mountain workers
SILVERTON — Julian Roberts is lighting a campfire on the outskirts of Silverton, wind whipping smoke toward the painted school bus where he lives with his fiancée. He’s been camping out for weeks in the picturesque town of 600, nestled in a caldera among southwest Colorado’s highest peaks. It was a choice at first. It […]
Posted inGrowth, Housing, News
Housing in small Colorado towns is “damn near a crisis.” But the solution isn’t as easy as just building more.
MANCOS — There’s no affordable housing in Mancos. Zero rental units. Nearly no houses on the market. The town’s school district struggles to hire teachers because they can’t find a place to live. It’s the same story with the town government, the hospital and the nursing home. It’s an “overwhelming issue” for the town of […]
Posted inEconomy, Growth, Housing, News
“It’s scary”: The housing shortage has reached a crisis point in southwest Colorado
DURANGO — Pagosa Springs paramedic Matt Robison was living with two friends in a 1,200-square-foot house until this summer — when his rent would have leapt 60%, to $2,400 a month. Robison hit the road, working wildland fires and living out of his truck. Sixty miles west, professor Rebecca Clausen has heard from faculty at […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Technology
Gigabit internet coming to more rural southwestern Colorado communities
Bit by bit, southwestern Colorado is cobbling together fiber-fast broadband service to get its residents up to speed, or at least to 2015 internet standards, when the Federal Communications Commission updated its benchmark to 25 megabits down and 3 Mbps up. The latest bit came this week as three Colorado counties learned that Utah-based Emery […]
Posted inGrowth, News, Politics and Government
As 2020 Census approaches finish line, Colorado looks to close the gap of who’s undercounted
The last day for Coloradans to respond to the 2020 census, the decennial poll of everyone living in the U.S. that determines how billions of dollars are spent across the country, is fast approaching. As of Thursday, more than 96% of the state’s households have been counted, with almost 70% responding on their own. That’s […]
Posted inBusiness, Education, News, Politics and Government, Technology
Little-known internet network plans Western Colorado expansion to link students, nonprofits to supercomputers
The text-heavy website looks like it’s stuck in the 1990s. But peering past the Front Range GigaPop’s pages full of Times New Roman font and blue underlined links, you’ll understand what the fuss is about. The broadband network, long exclusive to universities and federal research labs, offers unthinkably fast speeds and access to the brightest […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Technology
Rural Colorado sees more broadband options coming online. But getting up to speed is taking longer than anticipated in some areas.
A rush of broadband service is moving into the outskirts of the state, where internet faster than 10 mbps seems scarcer than the number of people who live there. Ting Internet, already rolling out gigabit service to residents in the city of Centennial, acquired a Durango-based internet provider last month and just announced it will […]