Crawford Town Leaders Fight for a Brighter Future & Win!

Recently, we had the opportunity to visit Crawford Town Hall and meet with Wanda Gofforth, the Mayor, and Cathy Cheatham, with Friends of Crawford Town Hall, to reminisce at this historic landmark and learn about its recent renovations.

The Crawford Town Hall renovation was part of a city-wide beautification and safety program. After being slated for demolition, town leaders went to work raising almost 1 million dollars to pay for renovation costs. Now, the building that once housed the 6th-12th grade has been gifted back to the public, and includes wonderful amenities that help local entrepreneurs and families succeed and celebrate.

Crawford Town Hall is now complete with an event hall, a playground, a community commercial kitchen, classrooms, a community room, and not to mention, a lot of history and love. While we were visiting, we were able to see this community commercial kitchen in action as the Crawford based Rock N’ Roots Farm team whipped up CBD salve for all your aches and pains.

While touring the hall, we spoke about recent milestones. This valuable community resource is but one of many efforts on the part of Wanda, Cathy, and yet another mover and shaker in the community, Callie Gallegos. Thanks to these ladies, tens-of-thousands of dollars have rolled in for things like the local firehouse, library, playgrounds, and Crawford community parks. DMEA and Elevate have had the privilege of being part of each of these initiatives.

The Crawford Town Hall and Elevate Connection

So, what does Elevate have to do with Crawford Town Hall? Well, they have it for one. And for two, it wasn’t by accident or without work from these community leaders. These ladies have chosen to never settle for less-than just because they are a small and rural municipality.  Much like many rural communities around our service territory, these folks weren’t going to be satisfied until their town, too, was equipped with the modern amenity and economic boon that is Elevate Internet.

Two years after Elevate Internet entered the scene, the Town of Crawford, was still without decent internet service. However, in the true Crawford spirit, Colleen took it upon herself to personally do the work canvasing neighborhoods in order to garner the support needed to bring Elevate’s fiber network to Crawford. After only two-weeks, Colleen had collected the preregistrations needed to meet their Elevate zone goal!

And, six months after hitting their preregistration goal, this tiny town tucked up against the West Elks was hooked up to the gigabit speeds of Elevate. Since then, Elevate’s connection has allowed commerce to be conducted more efficiently, folks to live in this rural area and work from home, students to access digital resources, and the single mom to get her degree online.

Elevate internet being present somewhere that it “never should have been” is not only a testament to what the persistence of town leadership can get done for their community, but also, what we can get done when we band together and chose to never settle #TheCooperativeWay.