Biking and Broadband
A few weeks ago, my husband and I were mountain biking at Cuyuna Lakes Mountain Bike Trails, a 50-mile trail system in the Iron Range of northcentral Minnesota. These trails are an easy 30-minute drive from our home, located in a rural area of Minnesota. They are built on an old, abandoned iron ore mine that was active until 1984. The 50 miles of red dirt trails (red from the iron in the dirt) are one of our favorite things about the area we live in. 15 years ago when we first moved to the area, there was one two-way mountain bike trail around one of the mine lakes and there weren’t many people on the trail. Sometimes we’d have the trail all to ourselves.
There are two towns near Cuyuna, Crosby and Ironton, frequently referred to as Crosby-Ironton. When we first moved here, Crosby-Ironton looked like a ghost town. Stores were abandoned and shuttered. There was one restaurant in town which had seen better days and there was rarely a car on the road. It was a sad, abandoned, rural Minnesota town.
Fifteen years later, with 50 miles of trails, yurts, picnic areas, terrain parks, mountain bike learning areas, and more, Cuyuna has become a mountain biking destination, at least in the State of Minnesota. We don’t even bother going to Cuyuna on the weekend in the summer unless we go early in the morning because it’s so crowded.
The mountain bike crowds brought people to Crosby-Ironton and a revitalization to the community. There are microbreweries, several restaurants, trendy loft hotels, a gourmet cheese and ice cream shop, and lots of tourist shops. The creation of a mountain bike state park has truly revitalized the community.
As I was biking that day, I kept thinking about how much this town has changed since we started coming here and the parallels I’ve seen as I’ve witnessed broadband deployments in rural communities in Minnesota. I’ve seen communities transformed and invigorated by fiber deployments in the area I live in including one of the most remote areas of Minnesota – Cook County – the arrowhead of Minnesota, the triangular region along the northern part of Lake Superior and Canada. Starting in 2010, the local electric utility, Arrowhead Electric Cooperative, in conjunction with Consolidated Telecommunications Cooperative (CTC) built fiber to the home in their service area, an area with only seven meters per mile and in the most underserved broadband area of Minnesota.
It transformed the community. People want to live there. I mean, people wanted to live there before, it’s one of the most beautiful areas of Minnesota and my favorite area, but now people CAN live there and work there. Businesses thrive and towns have come back to life. While I watched the revitalization of the North Shore area from afar and as a tourist, I got to see it more in action when my sister and Brother-In-Law purchased a resort on the Gunflint Trail. Gunflint Lodge sits near the end of the Gunflint Trail, a sparsely populated now highway (formerly just a dirt trail) that ends near Canada. Their resort is literally across a lake from Canada and one of the most remote places I’ve been. The closest town is Grand Marais, 50 miles from their lodge and formerly also the closest cell tower, so very limited communications. However, thanks to the Fiber To The Home (FTTH) project a few years earlier, there was fiber to the resort when they purchased it. People go to Gunflint Lodge to disconnect from life and work and to truly be in nature. At the same time, my sister and Brother-in-Law can run a state-of-the-art resort with all the technology, social media, and connectivity needed.
With COVID and the ability to work remotely and with the broadband connectivity that is in place, that area of Minnesota has truly grown and thrived. Communities in the area have been revitalized. They are busy and bustling (sometimes a little too much in my opinion).
Whatever the reason for small towns coming back to life – whether it’s broadband or biking, or both, it’s great to see rural communities reinvigorated and thriving again.