If anyone could appreciate what Internet access can do for McDermitt, it would be Frank Reeves. With his broad shoulders and thick forearms, he looks as though he could lift the town with his bare hands, even at age 72. In a way, he has. After World War II, he and his new bride, Jo, reopened the service station that his father had been forced to close during the lean war years. The couple went on to operate a motel, a hamburger stand, and a trailer park (where their home stands today). Over the years, Frank has also played a significant role in other town projects: He helped to bring water-and-sewer service to the community, to develop a 5,900-foot-long paved airplane runway, and to open the Say When Casino. He says that what he likes best about his hometown is that it has four seasons and that "people don't bother me. I can do what I want. I don't have any place I like better."
He and Jo, 73, were among the first subscribers to M-HIP. But it wasn't Frank's idea. As it turns out, he is not a big fan of the Internet. "Oh, I've enjoyed it, but it really hasn't helped me that much," he says. "I consider it one hell of a time waster." Primarily, he uses it to check the weather and to follow the Idaho Steelheads, the minor-league hockey team in Boise. Since he can't pick up the road games on the radio, he listens to them online.
It's Jo, a small, energetic grandmother, who embraced the Net from the start. She wanted to communicate with more than two dozen relatives living in Europe. Like many McDermitt residents, Jo traces her family to the Basque region of Spain, where her ancestors learned to shepherd before coming to work on sheep farms in Nevada. She's not much of a letter writer, and the international phone rates make a decent conversation expensive. "I don't know how to talk for just one minute," Jo says. Now she emails her relatives regularly, and "they answer right back," she says. "I love that."
Jo knows that she's barely tapped the Web's capabilities, but in the right hands, she believes that the technology could help McDermitt's economy. When two local mines were operating back in the 1950s, the hotel restaurants were packed every Sunday night. Families enjoyed dinner, neighbors visited, and children played. McDermitt was small but lively. Not anymore. "My husband doesn't like when I say this, but I think it's a modern-day ghost town," she says. "It's a nice, nice place to live, but we have nothing to offer our young people. I hope someday they can sit at a computer in McDermitt and do work for offices in New York, that type of thing."
It's not inconceivable. Recently, Jo, the town's unofficial director of tourism, got a call from someone who had read about McDermitt on a Web site devoted to Nevada cowboy country. Usually when someone calls the number listed for McDermitt -- the Reeves's home number -- Jo takes down a name and address and drops a short history of the town in the mail. But this call was different. It was from a California businessman who was more interested in McDermitt's future than in its past. "He said he was coming out to look at Lovelock, Winnemucca, and McDermitt," Jo recalls, "because he had an idea for something. He kind of wanted to tell me, but he didn't. We talked for about 40 minutes. We had a real nice conversation."
But the man hasn't called back. And as far as Jo knows, he hasn't been to town. Not many outsiders have. McDermitt is by no means the typical American small town. It's a lot smaller. You name it, and McDermitt doesn't have it. No town square or barbershop. No mayor or sheriff. Not one doctor, banker, or lawyer. Unlike Winnemucca, home to the Buckeroo Hall of Fame and the site of a bank robbery by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, McDermitt doesn't have a colorful claim to fame. "McDermitt is a love-hate community," says Principal Moddrell, who has lived here for 22 years. "You either love it and stay your whole life, or you leave right away."
McDermitt may not have a radio station or a newspaper, but it does have one of the most wired schools in the country, with 125 computers equipped to go online. Above the entrance to McDermitt Combined School is a sign that, missing letters and all, seems to capture the spirit of the school as well as the community:
B IN CHALL NGED IN
LIFE IS I EVITABLE
BEING DEFEATED
IS OPTIONAL
McDermitt has certainly endured its share of challenges. In the mid-1800s, it was known as the Dugout, a pit stop where miners making the journey between Sacramento, California, and Silver City, Idaho with an ox team would stop for whiskey, poker, and supplies. The Dugout also catered to 500 or so soldiers stationed at a camp outside town, later known as Fort McDermitt. President Lincoln put the camp in place in 1865 to quell Indian uprisings against settlers in nearby Paradise Valley, and by 1890, the mission was accomplished and the fort abandoned. It was too remote to maintain.
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