Parks officials have been on a 10-year quest to make sure all of the system’s 49 parks have Internet access. They aren’t there quite yet, but they recently took another step forward when they introduced Wi-Fi service to Beech Fork State Park’s rental cabins.
Sam England, chief of the Division of Natural Resources’ Parks Section, said the remote rural nature of most parks makes them difficult to connect to the Internet.
“At some of our parks, it’s hard to even get a cellphone signal,” he explained. “And even if there is an Internet service provider near a park, there’s the problem of burying a cable to bring it into a park, and then there’s the problem of distributing the signal to lodges, cabins and campgrounds.”
England said parks officials faced a similar problem when they began bringing electrical service to cabins built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
“Those cabins originally had kerosene lanterns. Running electrical lines to them turned out to be a huge logistical problem,” England said.
The effort to bring 21st-century Internet connectivity to the system began a decade ago, when England and a handful of colleagues took it upon themselves to bring the Internet to state-park lodges.
“We realized we had folks showing up with laptops and saying they needed to hook up to the Web,” England recalled. “I had been one of the lead people installing computerized registration systems at our lodges, and we realized we could split out part of the signal to the public and give our guests Internet access.”
Ed Nelson at the state Office of Technology devised and tested the hardware to make that happen, and he and England traveled from lodge to lodge installing it. They finished the project in the summer of 2009.
That took care of the 10 lodge parks. Getting the other 39 online has been a challenge, and the job isn’t finished yet. England said four particularly remote parks still lack service.
“We’ve concentrated on the parks with overnight facilities — lodges, cabins and campgrounds,” he said. “At the very least, we try to have at least one wireless ‘hotspot’ on each where people can go and get connected. It might be at the park office or at a campground bathhouse, but at least people know they can get online if they need to.”
The park system’s ultimate goal, he added, is to spread connectivity across parks’ entire campground and cabin complexes.
Creating Wi-Fi hotspots can get downright complicated. At Pocahontas County’s Watoga State Park, located in the radio “quiet zone” that surrounds the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, officials are having to resort to a satellite hookup.
“Cell phones don’t work there because it’s in the quiet zone,” England said. “We have to provide some level of service so people can connect, so we’ve hired a company to provide the service there.”
According to the Woodall’s Campground Management publication, 41 percent of the decisions on where to go camping are based on the availability of Wi-Fi and technology. England said that without Internet connectivity, people in the future might simply avoid staying at West Virginia’s parks.
“Technology and Internet connectivity will help us remain relevant, especially with young visitors. For Gen Xers and tweens, the social functions of the Internet are such a part of their daily lives that they can’t do without them,” he said.
“Most of them can disconnect for a short time, but then they might want to take selfies of themselves roasting marshmallows at a campfire and post the pictures to Facebook. They want to be connected and interactive.”
England said older visitors, while not as cyber-active, still need to get online from time to time.
“Almost every business group that wants to come and stay with us demands to be able to connect to work. When we host conferences, we see people constantly checking their business email,” he explained.
Even if England and his colleagues are able to create a “wired” park system, they face the challenge in keeping it in sync with advances in technology.
“Nowadays most people have smart phones or tablets, and they want to stream audio and video on them,” he said. “That requires a lot of bandwidth. So we’re constantly having to beef up our systems to resolve bandwidth problems.”
England credited Office of Technology workers for helping the parks system stay abreast of technological needs.
“We have a fine working relationship with those folks,” he said. “They’ve been incredibly helpful in getting us the bandwidth and facilities we have.”
He called the system’s 10-year effort “a great learning experience.”
“[Park superintendents] Scott Durham, Matt Yeager and I were just old park rangers, but we recognized a need and took it on ourselves to learn the technology that could make it happen. It’s been a great learning experience for all of us.”
©2015 The Charleston Gazette (Charleston, W.Va.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
