Internet pioneer riding into sunset

Dave Hughes, the cursor cowboy, is about to hang up his digital spurs.

The 79-year-old Internet pioneer said Tuesday that he will shut down his Old Colorado City Communications Internet access business on Jan. 15 after 23 years so he can devote more time to posting a comprehensive digital history of the Old Colorado City area on the Web.

Hughes started one of the first computer bulletin boards in the Colorado Springs area, brought Internet service and later wireless broadband access to the city’s west side and brought the Internet to some of the most remote areas on earth, including Mount Everest. Wired maga- zine dubbed him the “cursor cowboy.”

The Englewood native and retired Army colonel also helped lead the revitalization of Old Colorado City by prodding the city to start a revolving loan fund to finance renovation of the area’s historic buildings that now house retailers and small businesses.

“I am almost 80 years, old and in the last year, I had to decide what to do with (the company),” Hughes said. “My kids don’t want to continue with it, and I didn’t want to leave my customers high and dry, but now there is an alternative and I can walk away.”

Old Colorado City Communications serves about a dozen or so customers with wireless broadband service; many former customers have switched to other providers. Comcast Corp. and Qwest Communications International Inc. both offer high-speed Internet access on the west side.

“Dave really never ran Old Colorado City Communications as a business; it was always a laboratory for his ideas,” said Michael Gardner, a former partner in the company and now publisher of Springs Magazine. “He could see the future more clearly than the rest of us.”

Hughes has never run short of ideas. In 1980, he started a computer bulletin board, an early version of today’s Internet blogs, called “Rogers Bar,” named for a west-side watering hole that put in a phone jack in a booth so he could access the Internet while there.

“I became an electronic bartender. Every town had a bar where local politics were discussed. I called this one Rogers Bar, where Democratic union politics was always discussed,” Hughes said. “I saw connectivity between people as a worldwide revolution.”

Old Colorado City Communications was started in 1984 to offer e-mail and other early forms of computer communications through phone lines to west-side residents and businesses. Five years later, the company began offering dialup access to what is now the Internet.

“Dave is a pioneer in the truest sense of the word. He had a vision of using microelectronics to solve real-world problems,” said Bill Taylor, who nominated Hughes for the Distinguished Graduate Award he received in 2004 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

By the mid-1990s, Hughes began using wireless radios to bring high-speed Internet access to his customers at prices that small businesses could afford and years before cable television providers or Qwest made broadband service available.

“I guess this signifies the end of an era,” said Klaus Dimmler, a local entrepreneur who like Hughes was an Internet pioneer. “I commend Dave for his vision and insight. He did a lot of early demonstrations on how powerful the Internet is.”

Hughes wasn’t content to confine his vision to the Springs. He helped to bring Internet access to 116 small schools in Montana for distance learning and received $2 million in National Science Foundation grants to install wireless Internet access in remote areas.

His wireless projects ranged from using pubs in Wales as wireless hubs to helping bring Web access to Mongolian schools and setting up an Internet link at a Mount Everest base camp in Tibet.

Many of Hughes’ remote wireless projects have focused on bringing Internet access to Third World schools and connecting sensors for biological or environmental research to the Web so scientists can more easily get the sensor readings.

“I’m always on the bleeding edge, but I’m not doing it because I’m a geek. I figure out the economics of it and move to the social payoff for culture and education,” Hughes said. “Wireless is a cost-effective means of communication for many areas.”

After shutting down Old Colorado City Communications, Hughes will spend much of his time compiling a digital history of Old Colorado City, including every resident who lived there, every owner of every building and every event that has happened there.

“Anyone in the world will be able to look up the history, photos and browse the collection” of the Old Colorado City Historical Society,” he said. “Lots of people went through Old Colorado City during the Pikes Peak or Bust era, and we want to document that.”

Hughes plans to use $30,000 he will donate and spend the rest of his life assembling the massive collection of information. And after that, he has elaborate plans to continue living on in the virtual world.

“My sons will bury me with my laptop with a wireless connection and software that will keep the battery charged with a solar panel, so that six months after my (body) is gone, my laptop will wake up and start a conversation on the Internet,” Hughes said.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0234 or wayneh@gazette.com

DAVE HUGHES MILESTONES

1980: Starts Old Colorado City Electronic Cottage, a computer bulletin board, an early communications tool similar to today’s blogs.

1984: Starts Old Colorado City Communications to offer e-mail and other electronic communications to west-side residents and businesses.

1989: Old Colorado City Communications offers dial-up access to west-side residents and businesses.

2008: Hughes will shut down Old Colorado City Communications on Jan. 15.

FULL OF IDEAS

Some of Dave Hughes’ projects are global, including using pubs in Wales as wireless hubs, bringing access to Mongolian schools and setting up a Web connection at a Mount Everest base camp.