LINCOLN — When Jon Amastae was growing up in Lincoln, there was only one telephone in town.
It was a big wooden box on the wall, with a wired earpiece and a fixed microphone, Amastae recalled. Users had to turn a crank on one side to make their calls connect.
The past few years have brought a kind of broadband renaissance to Lincoln, an unincorporated community between Ruidoso and Roswell. The town’s expanding internet access is set to change everything from emergency communications to the local economy, while allowing residents to access the same things their urban counterparts already do — like online shopping or remote work.
The Artesia-based internet provider Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative secured a handful of government grants to expand broadband access in the community starting in 2024.
The company worked with the local electric cooperative to string fiber-optic internet cables on electric poles and provide fiber internet service — widely considered the gold standard in the industry — to Lincoln homes and businesses.
“We turned that up in January of ’24, and we haven’t had a trouble call yet — so that is a reliable service that has connected people in the little town of Lincoln, N.M.,” said Mitch Hibbard, chief operating officer at Peñasco Valley Telephone.
Situated in a valley amid the Capitan Mountains, Lincoln doesn’t yet have cell service — but Amastae’s home has better internet than most.
The internet service connects Amastae to news, entertainment and virtual meetings. Online shopping makes it easier to purchase necessities, with most stores a long drive away.
Amastae said he’s hopeful a new internet connection at the community church will allow more local organizations to host virtual or broadcast meetings.
What does he use the internet for? “Pretty nearly everything,” Amastae said.
Boosting local businesses
Unlike grain, hops, yeast and water, internet access isn’t essential for brewing beer.
But it helps, said Melissa Boutte, one of the owners of Lincoln’s Bonito Valley Brewing Co.
Danica Sagowa serves customers at the Bonito Valley Brewing Co. during the Old Lincoln Days town celebration in Lincoln on Aug. 3.
Broadband internet has made a difference for a few Lincoln business owners, who use it as another amenity to offer visitors and as a way to accept credit card payments.
Located in a historic home on Lincoln’s main street, Bonito Valley Brewing opted for fiber internet a few years ago and installed range extenders to ensure the connection could stretch through the building’s thick adobe walls to its outdoor patio.
In addition to allowing credit card payments inside the brewery and at outdoor food trucks, the internet connection plays an important role during Sunday brewing sessions, Boutte said.
Beer has to be heated and cooled at certain times throughout the process for proper fermentation. Thanks to broadband internet, Boutte said, her husband, the brewmaster, can monitor its temperature remotely.
“We couldn’t do that before,” she said.
Improving emergency response
When Jake Canavan joined in 2020, the all-volunteer Lincoln Fire Department had just eight members to cover some 300 square miles.
The department has since tripled in size and greatly improved its official fire suppression accreditation. But Canavan, now the chief, has more improvements in mind.
One of his goals involves better internet access.
The computer-aided dispatch system in Canavan’s department-issued truck can access the internet. This is particularly helpful during an incident, so he can get maps and other information he needs without tying up the department’s radio communications system.
“Anything I can get without having to call out, especially during an incident, is nice,” he said.
However, the dispatch system doesn’t work everywhere in town. Because Lincoln doesn’t have consistent cell service, Canavan has to park and connect to a building’s Wi-Fi to use the system.
With a communitywide public network currently under consideration in Lincoln — another project from Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative — Canavan has requested a special network for emergency services, allowing firefighters and sheriff’s deputies to use their computer-aided equipment throughout the area.
“Anywhere in town, if we’re pulled off on a wreck or something like that, our trucks would stay connected,” he said.
Providing consistent internet access for first responders is part of the plan for the cooperative, too, Hibbard said. The internet connection is important, he said, “not only in those good times but in those scary times.”
Improving the department’s communications system wouldn’t just help emergency personnel stay connected. It also would lower insurance rates — in a part of the state recently and repeatedly hit by natural disasters.
Local fire departments are rated from 1 to 10 — with 1 representing excellent service — based on how well personnel can prevent and respond to fires and the quality of the water supply and communications systems. Underwriters, in turn, use those scores to make decisions about insurance rates.
The Lincoln Fire Department’s rating recently improved from a 6 to a 4, Canavan said, after making improvements to the water system, recruiting more members and providing more training and newer equipment.
Communitywide internet could further improve the department’s score and decrease insurance costs, he said.
Bringing history to life
History comes alive in Lincoln.
Each year, some 150 residents of the area gather to put on The Last Escape of Billy the Kid, a folk pageant during the Old Lincoln Days celebration dedicated to sharing the boy bandit’s story.
“There’s people that portray Billy as an outlaw. There’s people that portray Billy as a hero. We’re not trying to portray either one of those. We are trying to promote history,” said Jet Tucker, president of Lincoln Pageant and Festivals Corp., the all-volunteer nonprofit that puts on the festivities.
Representatives from the Peñasco Valley Telephone Cooperative watch the parade from the sidelines during the Old Lincoln Days town celebration in Lincoln on Aug. 3. The Artesia-based internet service provider has secured government grants to expand broadband access in the rural community.
Despite being known for its history, the town isn’t stuck in the past. Lincoln’s recent broadband expansion has made the event even more accessible by allowing the pageant box office and nearby vendors to accept credit cards, rather than just cash.
Whether or not you visit for the pageant — and Tucker noted people do plan summer vacations around the great escape — it’s not hard to catch the history bug in Lincoln.
The area is home to the two largest state-run historic sites in New Mexico, said Oliver Horn, regional manager of Lincoln and Fort Stanton historic sites. The Lincoln Historic Site alone includes 17 buildings in a quarter-mile stretch of town. Down the road, Fort Stanton offers another 88 architectural features. Together, the two sites make up more than half the structures under the purview of the state Department of Cultural Affairs.
“Lincoln has always been a big draw,” Horn said. “Historically, it’s the most visited state historic site, even though it’s the most isolated out of all of them.”
As the legend of Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War took on an outsized role in the collective imagination of the Old West, Lincoln grew into “this iconic setting in American popular culture,” Horn said.
During Old Lincoln Days, that feeling is on display. Local museums and historic sites are open to visitors. Vendors sell clothing, food and jewelry, while others put on blacksmithing and gold panning demonstrations. The hourlong Last Escape of Billy the Kid caps the celebration, with cowboys riding through a miniature version of Lincoln on real horses, shooting real guns (albeit loaded with blanks).
The pageant first started accepting credit cards at the box office in 2024, which resulted in greater online than cash ticket sales, said Amastae, whose family has been involved with the pageant since its start more than 80 years ago.
“I’m sure now that everybody knows we can do that, that number will go up,” he added.
This year’s pageant, which took place in early August, marked the first time a broadband connection was available to vendors as well.
It’s not a bad change to make in a town with no ATMs, as more and more visitors exclusively carry cards, Tucker said.
“It’s the new modern way of the world,” he added.