Hills Rez is first park in county to get wired for broadband

The Hills Rez Park is the first campground in Rock County to receive access to broadband Internet.
Campgrounds in the cities of Hardwick and Magnolia, Blue Mound State Park north of Luverne, and the Beaver Creek baseball field and park area are on track to have service this fall or next spring.
The Hills Rez has 10 camping pads and each spot has access to WiFi services.
The camp connections are a project of the Blandin Broadband Communities Grant to increase broadband Internet use across all sectors, including agriculture, education, health, private businesses and private use.
“Having WiFi at the campgrounds would give campers a way to better engage with the park and their community,” said Calla Jarvie, Rock County Library director.
The Rock County Library received a 2018 Broadband Communities Grant, and a local committee was established late last year to identify gaps in broadband service.
Hills Mayor Keith Elbers is on the committee. “Every gadget nowadays needs WiFi,” he said.
At the Hills Rez, the grant will be used to purchase the equipment and one year of WiFi service. The city will then pick up the service costs. “It’s not very much,” Elbers said.
The WiFi service will also be available to other groups who use the Rez area. The Beaver Creek Sportsman’s Club, for example, could use it for the fishing derby, or the Helping Build Communities Stronger group could use it during the annual Hills Friendship Days activities.
As a Blandin Broadband Community, Rock County is eligible for a matching grant up to $75,000 and matching equipment up to $25,000.
The committee works with Alliance Communications Cooperative in Garretson, South Dakota, which installed fiber-to-the-premise broadband Internet in Rock County in 2016.
“The Blandin Foundation (community grant) helped a ton,” said Andy Hulscher with Alliance Communications.
The grant covered costs of outdoor equipment (about $1,800) and underground fiber optic cable to access points in the campgrounds on 15- to 18-foot poles.
Hulscher said Alliance has worked with only one other facility, the Yogi Bear Campground near Brandon, to provide broadband Internet to visitors.
“A challenge was receiving the signal inside the metal campers,” he said.
Trial and error with various antennae solved the problem of WiFi ability inside campers.
While Jarvie admitted campers are able to access any information they want from the Internet, she hopes they would use the service to look up local restaurants, information about the local area and events in Rock County.
“Campgrounds also have visitors who need to work while staying, and WiFi would allow them to do their work without having to burn their own data or leave the campground in order to find an Internet connection,” Jarvie said.