Jeff Davis County LibraryFORT DAVIS, Texas – The 260 mile drive to Fort Davis, Texas down Texas Highway 17 is a great travel route. Stretches of beautiful mountains with no signs of human habitation enticed us to stop on the side of the road to listen to the quiet, and enjoy the crisp air and clear sky. We were not interrupted by our cell phones because we had no signal much of the time.
Ft. Davis is a very interesting West Texas town and has western themed hotels and great food. We ate steak, barbeque, and beans at The Chuck Wagon, a local restaurant located directly in front of the Fort Davis National Historical Site. The portions were Texas size and they served your beverage out of real Mason jars. I normally don’t trust a skinny chef, but he changed my culinary mind this day.
Fort Davis has about 1,000 residents, but the library serves the entire county of about 2,500 people. We arrived at 8 a.m. at the
Jeff Davis County Library to meet Toi Fisher, the energetic redheaded librarian. At first glance her library building appears to be a former jail, but she quickly told us that it was a former Union mercantile building. It has a western historical charm, and the huge open windows with bars cooled it to a comfortable level.
Toi told us the library staff work to make the library an exciting place and that it serves as a community center. After school ends at 3 pm, many school children come to the library to complete their homework and participate in after school activities until around 5 to 6 p.m., when parents get off work. During this time they use the Internet, complete projects, and enjoy other resources at the library. It is also a community safety net for the school children until they are picked up.
David, tall and studious teen, uses web-based social networking tools at the library to stay in touch with his brother who moved to China to attend college, and to stay in touch with his friends in Abilene, Texas some 340 miles away. He also uses the library’s Internet resources for his research projects. Internet access at the library gives him access to the world.
David told us about traveling from his home, nestled in the mountains with roads often only accessible by vehicles with 4-wheel drive, and where any type of Internet service, including satellite, is not available. The only options for Internet service for most people in this area are expensive, unreliable, or slow – unless you use the public library.
The library is the only free public Internet access in the area. Truckers and hotel guests visiting the fort or nearby McDonald Observatory use the library’s Wi-Fi in the parking lot before it opens. Other patrons bring in their laptops and plug directly into library’s network to pay bills and take care of other personal business. Ranchers in the area often come in to send bandwidth intensive video and pictures of their livestock and cattle to potential buyers and auctioneers.
We also met Sharon, who runs the Boys & Girls Club and uses the library extensively for Club programs. They help teens apply for college, financial aid, and have even hosted sleepovers for girls in the library. The citizens and visitors of this county are extremely dependent on the broadband services of the library, but Toi said they need greater broadband capacity to handle the heavy usage.
We then left for Fort Stockton 90 miles away, but we still enjoyed the scenery of this area through Alpine and on to I-10.
Fort Stockton Public Library
FORT STOCKTON, Texas – We met Elva Valadez, the director of the
Fort Stockton Public Library, and found her library was very busy with patrons working at the computers.
Elva told us that businesses do not even give applicants a choice. Applicants must become computer and Internet savvy or you can’t apply for or find a job. Sarah, the library staff person in charge of the network, told us many patrons are using the library’s computers to access Workforce resources because the area has experienced large layoffs. All of the Workforce applications must be submitted online.
John, a frequent library user, told us that he comes into the library at least five days a week and uses the library’s Internet access to run an avocado business and maintain his business relationships in Mexico.
Bill, another frequent user, describes himself as a self-employed small businessman, and describes the Fort Stockton library as serving the same role as a business such as Kinko’s in a larger city. He uses the library’s computers and network to handle all of his daily business and correspondence. He stated that if his library didn’t have broadband service, he would have to give up the small town charm of the Fort Stockton area and move to a bigger city. He also said that in rural communities, their access to the world is through broadband Internet access.
Our next stop was Big Lake, Texas, about 95 miles away. Approaching Big Lake we were looking for a big lake, but what we saw in the distance was miles and miles of wind turbines.
Reagan County Library
BIG LAKE, Texas – Let me clear up one detail about Big Lake - there is no longer a lake in Big Lake and from what we were told, it has been dry for an extended period of time, although there is a lake clearly marked on all of the maps that we used. The
Reagan County Library is located in the town square - in the heart of this town of 3,300 residents.
This is where we met the director Linda Rees. Her library is used heavily by the youth in the area with children’s materials comprising 34 percent of all library materials checked out. Her library staff considers themselves very experienced in helping people with job applications and resume writing because state agencies have told people that everything must be done online and the closest unemployment service in the area is about 70 miles away. She stated that government agencies are closing offices in small communities, consolidating offices in larger towns, and telling people to go to their local libraries to access online government services.
The town has been heavily hit by oil business layoffs, but because of the library’s computers and Internet access, the library has seen a dramatic increase in the number of people using the library. Linda’s library provides a basic Internet Search class every Monday night from 6-9 p.m. and the class list is often full well into the future.
We met a patron named Eva who was wearing nursing scrubs and had her little son with her. She was looking for jobs for her family and checking her e-mail. Another patron, Simon, said that because of the job situation, “the library is the only thing that they have going.” It gives him hope.
On our way to Sonora, Texas where we spent the night, once again the beauty of Texas made us stop at a bridge with water flowing on each side. This was another beautiful scene, and another beautiful reason that we feel we have traveled the entire nation because of the diverse topography of Texas.