
When Dealila Huskey, Technology Coordinator for the Dolores County School District, heard high-speed fiber internet was coming to her area in Dove Creek, Colorado, she was skeptical. She’d heard promises of that sort before, and it had become almost a pattern to witness companies give up or stop short before reaching her.
Dove Creek is a town in Southwest Colorado with a population just under 650. Despite being small, the community is the county seat and contains the county courthouse, fairgrounds, school district offices, senior services, and more essential amenities to keep things running smoothly for those who live in and around there. Until recently, however, the only available internet services to the area missed the mark.
Dependability, speed, bandwidth, and cost are all important factors for any internet customer. Due to its rurality and the high cost to bring fiber internet out to Dove Creek, most providers weren’t willing to try to bring this more modern, more dependable technology to remote places. However, in 2020, Emery Telcom, based in rural Orangeville, Utah, received a $3.6 million grant through USDA Rural Development’s ReConnect Program, to build out fiber internet connections to every home and business in Dove Creek.

The Dolores County School District has two schools in Dove Creek and administrators are proud to offer digital tools to enhance the students’ education. Students each have an assigned portable device to complete their work, and Dealila offers an access point in the high school parking lot for those who don’t have internet access at home. With the District’s previous provider, Dealila was told they could offer the bandwidth she needed for the schools, but the cost put it out of reach. As someone who considers all of the students as her own, she wanted better for them. With the new fiber build-out, she now offers higher speeds for a better experience.
“Having access to high-speed internet, having access to the technology that supports high-speed internet, is and always has been my goal,” says Dealila. “The majority of students that are growing up now have that instant need to understand what they’re trying to do and understanding what they’re researching. Having that high-speed internet makes that accessible.”

At the Dove Creek Town Hall, Lorraine Hancock, the Town Clerk and Treasurer, says that, from a town administrator perspective, high-speed internet access is both a need and a feature in Dove Creek.
“Prior to having Emery Telcom, we had two internet services. One or the other was always down, one always failed, and a lot of times both of them were down,” she says. “It was very hard to stream any kind of meetings or have any kind of remote municipal court proceedings.”
Livestreaming public meetings and remote court dates are just some benefits to reliable internet. Without it, any passersby who get a traffic ticket along the highway would have to travel back to Dove Creek to make their court appearance. This is nearly impossible for most people who are just traveling through. Another benefit is the town’s new waterline project, which includes a remote monitoring component that Lorraine says “wouldn’t be able to happen” without the new fiber internet.
All of this contributes to Dove Creek’s economic well-being and livability.
“There's also a lot of people that work remote, that are living here,” Lorraine says. “We have a low cost of living. So a lot of people are moving here, and they're able to move here because of the high speed internet. They can keep their jobs all around the country and keep up with it.”
For Emery Telcom, the Dove Creek expansion is more than just a new service area, it’s a mark of progress in reaching more rural cities and towns, and one step closer to creating further redundancy in service, which will provide even better reliability and connectivity.

“We’re invested,” says Jared Anderson, Chief Operations Officer of Emery Telcom. Jared isn’t just talking about the results of the fiber construction. Emery Telcom contributed a 25% matching funds contribution to accomplish the work, which was completed in 2023 with customer installs continuing into 2024.
As for what they provide, Jared says it’s essential they connect to Dove Creek in spirit as well as in product. “Dove Creek is no different than the little towns in Emery County [Utah] that our roots are founded in since 1950. All of our areas are rural and this is what we do. The community’s been super supportive and everybody’s getting fiber to the home, fiber to the business, and things have been going really well,” he says, “Emery Telcom was formed as a non-profit cooperative in the rural communities of Emery County. Its purpose has always been to promote investment into rural networks, so the Dove Creek expansion was a perfect fit.”
Gus Westerman, Dolores County Director with Colorado State University Extension, is an advocate for the communities he serves, and sees this internet expansion project as the key to the future, and a model for how partnerships should work.
“Internet is now an essential utility and without it our community was being left behind,” he says. “The Emery Telecom Project will allow Dove Creek and the surrounding communities to continue to be competitive in attracting employers, generating other economic opportunities, and allowing our residents to have reliable access to healthcare and education in the virtual realm. This project is a success story for this program and a great example of USDA Rural Development resources making a direct impact on rural America.”
The grant project area also included residences in north, south, and east Monticello, Utah. Many of these homes are very spread out in rural farming communities and haven’t had access to reliable broadband internet until now. Additionally, the grant assisted with the middle mile fiber build between Monticello, Utah and Dove Creek, Colorado.

To learn more about USDA Rural Development’s ReConnect program, visit www.usda.gov/reconnect. For more information about all of USDA Rural Development’s programs dedicated to telecommunications, visit www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/telecommunications-programs.