A Rural Colorado Coal County Was Struggling. Then A Tech Company Brought New Jobs
“To explain why folks in rural Delta County, Colo. are feeling a lot less anxious than they were a couple years ago, consider the story of Johnny Olivas. He’s digging a line down a steep, dirt driveway, where he’ll lay fiber optic cable into a home. His company, Lightworks Fiber, has begun installing badly needed broadband to this remote valley of deserts and aspen-cloaked mesas. ‘I didn’t know anything about fiber optic, but you catch on pretty quick,’ Olivas says during a break. ‘It’s a hell of a lot easier than coal mining.’ Like a lot of his family and old high school buddies, Olivas used to be a coal miner at one of the mines in the mountains of western Colorado that once employed thousands of workers with full benefits.”