The Oregon Story; Rural.com

Funding for production of the Oregon Story was made possible through a generous grant from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development. This is a story about one year in the life of a small town in eastern Oregon, A very unusual year. When it began Halfway, Oregon was just another western town that was losing its economic base. Mining, logging, ranching, farming and fishing, Halfway tried it all. Those natural resources were playing out or not paying off and there weren't

enough jobs. So Halfway's children were leaving. Just up the road are the Snake River and Hell's Canyon. So it seemed like tourism was the town's last chance. But folks worried that would bring in too many new people and change the town's character. But then Halfway got involved in an experiment with e-commerce. The curse was already there. Now I say OK folks started using the Internet to sell products to people far away from this tough little town carved out of the granite gray Alawa mountains and far away from Pine Valley where halfway nestles the West is full of old company towns. This is the first Ciber company town. It isn't exactly where you'd expect to find the fastlane of America's information super

highway. In fact the road ends here. But these days half way Oregon is a good first stop for other rural communities who want a road map to a future that includes e-commerce. In fact Half-Way might have a higher per capita percentage of businesses on the Internet and residents wired to the web than any other place on the planet. By the time the year ended people went half way and in Pine Valley had discovered an alternative economy and rediscovered their sense of community. It all began in December 1999 on the eve of Y2K when a stranger came to town. Mark Hughes had just started work as marketing chief for an Internet startup from

Conshohocken Pennsylvania half.com planned to sell secondhand books CDs and videos on the web. At half price the people who we thought we were going to go up against were eBay and Amazon. We were I mean we were aiming high and we didn't have the resources that you one of them had so we really had out think or competition rather than outspend our competition. So Mark Hughes and his team started brainstorming how to brand Half.com. They needed a publicity stunt or Cavitt if we go to Mt. Rushmore and like you know have some kind of like thought balloon coming out of you know George Washington. I don't know you know the Statue of Liberty and somehow get the Statue of Liberty to wear this big t shirt that said Raise your hand if you want to pay half price. I couldn't do that why. How about the Hoover Dam. Can be doing is saying you know damn those high prices. And then it just hit me. To brand the company as the place to shop at half price. Mark Hughes wanted to

convince a town named have something to change its name to have dot.com. The company went town shopping and found hafa Iowa half acre Alabama half moon bay California and half ways from Maryland to Texas to Oregon. Would have been pretty cool. Say hey half of Iowa like you so much changed the name to have dot.com but we wanted a town that was small. And. And half way was out in Oregon which is really kind of a pioneering place. The Oregon Trail we in turn were small and we were also pioneering a new space on the Internet. Our names have dot com and we wanted to you know kind of put ourselves on the map. Mark Hughes promised that if the town agreed to change its name in time for the company's Internet launch dot com would give Half-Way a hundred and ten thousand dollars worth of computers in cash. And.

WIRED the town. In December 1999 tech stocks were flying so the company gave the town just six weeks to say yes or no. And that was you know one of the things our CEO and founder Josh would say again and again and again you only launch once. Better make it good. In fact competition was so fierce half dot com couldn't even tell people in town what the company would be selling and the secrecy didn't sit well with folks like Mike Vidler. I'm sorry I don't buy it. I don't buy it. I realize their secrecy but just because they have a need for commercial secrecy is no sign that the will of the people in this valley is not taken into consideration. If they can't take the will of the people into consideration then we shouldn't be doing that. It's really insulting. To a lot of people. To have to trivialize your old little

community where your grandparents were born the kitchen or people who don't have kids in the community. You get to require me to have me arrested. They don't care what you. Tell me. So the town held a series of meetings to quell the dissent. I think there's a lot of people that a lot of people have called. And. Said. Hey. We think it's a great idea. It's a fun thing. But there were still holdouts like school principal Tom Crane. This is not a savior for anybody. There's only one savior in the end it's not half dot com. So changing the town's name was not an easy sell. Your name is your identity even when you're a town and Hathaways identity issues go way back. The town used to be called Midway but when the post office wanted to open a branch

there in 1885 folks discovered that the named Midway was already taken. So they settled on halfway. But even today more than a century later no one can agree on what Hathaway. Is. Halfway. Between. Their two or three theories on that one it is halfway between Robinet which is down underwater now from the Brownlie down reservoir and cornucopia which is still. Actually halfway between Carson and Pinetown. It's an axe isn't it. We're about halfway between the North Pole and the equator halfway between heaven and Hell's Canyon. That's where I looked at. And there was another problem. A 20 year old memory of another stranger who came to Half-Way Al Bourke's. He reopened the old movie theater and hired Virgil Waldren to keep his books. He wanted me to use my name and

tell him that that we paid every 30 days Banville Carswell did a lot of work for Al Bourke's and as it turned out he worked for free. Everybody worked for free for Al Burk's. It took about $35000 out of our pockets. Come to find out he wasn't making any deposits at the bank. So all the deposits I gave him he was just hanging onto was a real con man. Friends the brain is the devil's playground. We were sitting before we left Alberich told everyone he wanted to stage the music man. The story of a con man out to fleece a small town in Iowa that we never got our music production. This stranger from half.com wasn't selling a boys band but a deal about bandwidth. Still people remembered Al Bourke's and here we were again fear like lot of people were saying well I'm going to take advantage of us and rip us off again.

On January 19 the Half-Way city council voted to change the town's name to Half.com by proclamation only and only for one year subject to renewal. No television from Germany. Half.com stunt attracted news crews from Scotland and Japan in the Today show. Good morning. Joshua let me start with you this sounds like a shameless publicity stunt. Obviously we bet. Is that what it is that we do it to get attention. Sure we did. But we also think it's a great partnership which could provide benefits to both the town and the company. So Mayor Crowe What was your reaction when you first heard about the suggestion to change the name of your town to Half.com. Well I was a little bit surprised when they approached this. It took a little while for us to get the idea. So far it's been working great. Half.com paid just thousands for press coverage worth millions. It's probably more than a Super Bowl and.

The morning after the city council vote 22 computers arrived and schoolkids were clicking away. But right now there isn't much of a future for these kids in halfway. Thirty eight kids graduate from high school last year and there's none of them in town. They've all gone to school or gone to someplace else to work. And that happens printed every year. Mayor Crowe wants to use the half.com cum deal to create jobs. But the only obvious growth industry is tourism. A lot of folks fear that publicity about the half dot.com deal might bring too many tourists to halfway. There are certainly people here that are afraid too much tourism there's people here that moved here to get away from it all and they don't want it all here. So they'd rather not see. But I don't think it's going to make a big impact because there aren't that many things to do here is not like there's a ski resort or in the world. How are you doing today.

RAZ Rasmussen and his family own Alawa llama's a trucking company which guides hikers through the nearby Eagle camp wilderness with llamas packing gourmet food. They really love their customers come from all over the country. So Rassmussen created a Web site and now anyone with a computer can find his electronic storefront from anywhere in the world. That's e-commerce. In fact I'm changing my name to rouse dotcom. It's a model. Mayor Dick Crowe wants to build on and have dot.com has agreed to fund Web sites for other local businesses. I'm really looking at that new pickup truck. You know visualizing prosperity the internet might also lead stained glass artist Kiefer Yosemite's stay in Pine Valley while making Manhattan money. I've had disappointments with galleries. So now instead of trying to take my class to solo in New York for all the rich stockbrokers they can find me on the net one these days when I can figure out the scanner

tying the fortunes of towns in the rural west to technology is not entirely a new idea. Microsoft explored in this 1998 ads set in Laska Wyoming. The thing that is an opinion is that wine. Glass fiber is kind of easy to be famous it's harder to be famous for something. Russell Davis of the Portland advertising firm Weidmann Kennedy created the Microsoft campaign. They want to see their small town and keep it exactly the way it is and they're using everything they can think to do. Like last Wyoming Half-Way Oregon is willing to try anything the name change although it's not a big deal it's kind of symbolic and the symbol is in court. Limbaugh says this town is not a sleepy backwater It's a place that you know has some home about. Halfway. Not only has. People here are technologically sophisticated

but only a dozen businesses are wired so have dot com and we'll get the rest on line with help from the state's rural telephone company which is based in Half-Way rod Huff is president of Pintail. We have people who move here. Who come in look at the area and the first thing they ask is can we get internet or can we get a DSL here. Because they have a business they wish to run elsewhere. In fact Huff says you can get a high speed DSL line from halfway to Baker but not from Fakhry to Portland. We're small we can react faster. What you see in these two rooms. That we have here are full of telephone equipment is probably three million dollars for the requirement. That I really get to the service that's a division of the Department of Agriculture makes us loans. And if it wasn't for them many small communities wouldn't have this level of service. We have a tremendous level of service here. I feel the phone companies got fiber optics here. So it's you know we're we're they're just waiting for something to happen.

What the mayor has in mind is helping local crafts people find a bigger market for their cottage industries on the worldwide web. Like Banville Carswell. He and his wife moved to Half-Way 20 years ago looking to retire from the fast lane. Now he makes wood carvings of local wildlife. And it's been going fairly well but I just pay my bills like everybody else. I like to create some jobs but people have been trying to create more jobs and halfway for a long time without much success. Is e-commerce the solution. Well if they have a little link to their page in the right spot people will learn about the town and if they look under artists or businesses I'll be able to be pulled up by

10000 hundred thousand people maybe. But will e-commerce be a powerful enough force to keep the next generation from leaving town. Or will it be just another in a long string of booms that turned into. Is. As the town gets used to its new name. The company loses no time making a name for itself across America. I need my space. Well you know what. I need my space to say goodbye your joy Behar's So help the Titanic battle. At half dot com. You can sell all your unwanted stuff all for half what you paid. Yo I miss you too. You can buy it back. So can I call you back half

dot com Perhaps so perhaps. And finally adding dot com to a name used to be considered a sure way to riches. At least that's what one town in Oregon but maybe. Some critics say the town of halfway isn't getting much out of the deal. The town hoped to attract new business and jobs and tourists but apparently it just didn't pay off. The city says it has not seen any major increases in tourism or job growth. Paul some residents think that the whole idea was half baked. Well the way the dot.com stocks are doing if they don't change back pretty soon it'll be a gold star. Analysts say the market is now correcting for overpriced technology stocks but have Dotcom's fortunes are still on the rise. In June the Internet auction giant eBay buys half dot.com stock swap deal is worth $335 billion. They actually. Gave us a call and expressed their interest. 20 days after we named the town and 20 days after we launched.

But halfway only has about 70000 thousand dollars worth of half.com comes cash. So the city sets up a competition and people submit proposals for projects everything from new two way radios for the ambulance crew to a skateboarding park for the kids. It's really easy for kids to slip through the cracks into social services and whatnot. A lot of the kids that you see hanging around in front of the stores on skateboards or the kids that really need some help and so it's it's my little sneaky way of getting through to them half way is idylic on the surface but some people are barely making it. Summers are short and hot but winters are long and hard and the isolation leads to depression drugs even death. I have lived in in small towns in three or four western states and I think this is probably the highest rate of alcohol Tolleson depression and suicide that I've ever seen. Even though it's like a small town and people think that small towns are like oh perfect and nothing's

wrong in small towns. We have stuff like that here. So Half-Way will use half.com $70000 to solve some of those problems. The city asks a few leading citizens to sit on a selection committee and which projects to fund. Without progress. And you're going backwards. And. Maybe this will help you know at least put it on a map. That's for sure. I think the. The people that. Don't have com. Got Rich off of. How they spend the half.com money will shape the future. And there are some important lessons from the past. This was the first boom and bust of the country the Gethers and the owners of the Indians. Half-Way has been looking for a gold mine ever since the first fur trappers arrived.

And some prospectors really did find gold up in the mountains above half way in a place called cornucopia. It's a part of plenty Carney Copia as. I have an idea if that rock was run through the mill you would probably find traces of gold in it. That said the real rich or would be a rose color. Kind of like a rainbow. I love the scenery. My parents would hook up the ataman hack. And we would go to current Copia and Huckleberry. You can imagine how beautiful that place was in 1939. He was just simply just. Like. Everybody was happy. Norma Jean Schmidt's husband used to work in the cornucopia mines. I like to call up and walk down the main street and pretend like us all time. We're going towards down towards the main part of town right now Main Street.

There's a pretty swell so same town it at a grocery store and a barbershop saloon. Jail. The whole works. And this slab right here was the old recreation hall bowling alley that's all. My father wouldn't let me go to the dances up there because they poured beer on the floor and everybody took their shoes off and dance to the beer. Cornucopia. That was quite a place. That was Labor's only got $3 hours a day. And I think that was a low go celebrate too. And this is the old assaye office where they've done all the assaying of the oar and crushed it and all that kind of stuff. It was doing pretty good. And. It. Turned. Out. Go. We're approaching the tunnel of the original mine here. I've heard from some of them that they're just as much gold in the mountains as there was or

more than what they've taken out. And I imagine it probably right. We don't want to be dead or die in town or a ghost town. It's like you. Know the day something will show up but we'll put some employment back and people come back to work. Lots of gold there. Would you like to buy it when the mines shut down. A lot of the houses in cornucopia were hauled down the mountain. You might say Half-Way was built with the bones of cornucopia. People here have never completely stopped hoping they'll hit the mother lode someday. That one may have a little bit of silver in it but so far only the company has struck it rich off the half deal. And there's a lively debate over which economic future the town should embrace. The old dependable industries are slowing down shrinking. Take

Gordon Summers. He had to leave Pine Valley to earn his living. He went to Portland and became a surgeon. My grandfather on the other side of the family came west when he was a young boy and came because of a gold mine. After gold mining went bust. New businesses boomed. Then they went bust too. Only when he retired could Somers afford to be near church. And to do so he brought out neighboring. Rematches. I have about nine ranch properties around between the Richland Valley and this valley and each one of those in times past 30 40 years ago would have supported a full family. And yet we operate this was just too hard man. So my concentration is the ranchers and farms get larger and then that naturally results in fewer people.

Tourism is the up and coming economy especially in the summertime. Here. Are your bicycle. If you go there you're going to really be on your way to get to mazuma. Visitors fill the Pine Valley Lodge and the Half-Way motel farmers and ranchers they're going to survive with the towns here. But the town would like it to survive unless there's money coming. We need to have a ski slope up on that cornucopia mountain. Marion Ziggs is all for tourism. She owns Wild Bill's rescue. It's the center of town socially. Sooner or later everyone ends up here to eat to drink to do business to pass the time of day especially this year. I do believe that a lot of people that are coming through this year are here just to see what town would be so. Dumb or whatever they might think to go half dot com to

go a Web site. But not everyone wants more tourists. It's always been a small town. And why should we bring in more crime and more pay probably for crime we have. Pine Valley's beauty exerts an almost magnetic pole over people. All right. And sometimes the tourists never leave. Ever since the 60s Pine Valley has seen a steady trickle of newcomers early retirees telecommuters and people who just want to get back to the land. Like these folks. Building a yard at this 21st century version of an old fashioned barn raising Valley's biggest jigsaw puzzle. These urban refugees came searching for the simpler values of small town

America. This is a kind of community where you need your neighbor because financially it's difficult to support yourself and there's just a dependence that I think is beautiful here. We had been talking about it for a while we've been visiting here for about 15 years. And finally friends that we had met here they are just going you know when are you guys going to do this. People from all over this place come here. They want to live here. And I sure can't blame them for that. People come because values here are different. And her work harness you are you keep your promises. Mary Tagle lives in Eugene but she used to edit the pine Eagle bulletin back in the 70s when money was less important than it is today. It was more important how. You. Did. With. The land resources to help with your neighbors. Because that's for.

Your Food. It's going to come from. People who could get by in the 70s I don't mean rich go to Florida go to Disneyland buying a truck but get by on. Half of the poverty level $10000 a year. You can't make it on 10 grand a year anymore. The high cost of land is taking its toll. If you're selling prices are nice and high but the number of for sale signs around town suggests there aren't many buyers. So to make ends meet people like Jerry. We're working more than one job. He's a farmer in Pine Valley but that only accounts for part of his income. We're He's also an auctioneer and he's a deputy sheriff while his wife Mary runs the main street cafe and sells real estate. Greatest place in the world. The plight of people in Half-Way stuck with Mary Tagle when she got her master's degree at the

University of Oregon. She wrote her thesis on what happens when people stop living off the land and take nine to five jobs. Guess what you end up in the hole. If you're being paid minimum wage or even a little better. That's where e-commerce is supposed to come in. You can get everything from fishhooks to Moose Muskat the old pines sports shop. But even though he depends on the tourist trade proprietor Rick Bryant thinks halfway is a fragile place. I can see us getting used up very quickly we're not a ski resort. People can come to a ski resort and they can slide down the mountain a million times and it doesn't change anything. They can come in they can leave money but here we don't have that here. You have to come and catch fish or you have to come and shoot an elk. And we only have so many fish and so many. So to make money without increasing foot traffic Rick Brian went on the web with his core business selling and repairing Birkenstock shoes for city folk who have

fallen in love with the idea of Half-Way. And it's paying off. Probably until half com arrived. I don't think I've had more than a total of about. Four to six hundred hits total. And now I'm right about 4000. As businesses begin to experiment with e-commerce. The selection committee gets ready to spend half Dotcom's $70000. Look at this. By mid-July all the grant applications are in and Colet did. Kurt Lawrence will distribute them to his fellow committee members tonight. And as they consider which projects to fund they'll wait. Which ones do the most good for the most people. Food food food food food poor poor. Poor. Some sort of TV ads. It'll be fun.

I'm looking forward to. Summer always ends with the day Labor Day weekend fair and Rodeo. You don't hear too much grumbling about tourism this week. It's the biggest economic event of the Year. You seem to be losing. By now. The selection committee has awarded all of half Dotcom's money. If you think the fair itself got a thousand dollars you know our whole criteria was just to make sure that it affected the most people.

Lawrence's family contracting business isn't online but his team spent thousands buying computers for the library the clinic in the firestation. Thousands more went to alcohol drug and suicide prevention programs. But the biggest winner of all was the city. Two thirds of half Dotcom's money. Forty eight thousand dollars will go to buy the town another snowplow. But the skateboard park got nothing. The half dog some money went to Half-Way But Curt Lawrence says the team wanted to fund things that help Pine Valley to. Have to come selling. This whole surrounding area as this sportsman's paradise. But that's not halfway. Halfway House to be the spot. You go to the grocery store and get some that are you stay in the hotel or whatever. The Lodge. This year half Dotcom's Clint Schmidt is on hand for the fair. The e-bay deal was great for half dot.com stockholders like Clint but not so

good for the town. There was talk about building a half dot.com facility here. But the San Jose based eBay already has a West Coast call center. The only person to get a new job out of the half dotcom deal is deputy sheriff Jerry Wier. He's the town's new webmaster webmaster which has got the town bulletin board up and running and people are posting messages from as far away as Russia. Some of them are just congratulating us on you know beautiful town mainly And then about the kind of getting wired and into the modern world of the Internet which is kind of exciting for small town and out in the middle of nowhere. This is a recent message from Glory says hi. Your town looks beautiful. What I saw on the page what kind of employment do you have in here. The half.com deal is getting mixed reviews. A few of them are people who are kind of critical of the relationship with half dot com because it is a kind of a commercial and we

free. I freely admit that it's it's a gimmick. And right after Labor Day weekend one of Hathaways earliest Internet pioneers is leaving town. I thought I could make a little business out of it. Banville car cell couldn't turn e commerce into a gold mine. I think that. I. Got the better of the deal. Larger and bigger and greener pastures elsewhere. For us anyway. By October it's two thirds of the way into the one year half dotcom deal. Tourism is still important in the fall. It's hunting season and people are coming from hundreds of miles away to attract game. Career and fish for salmon on the Snake River near Hell's Canyon. There you

are. People are wondering whether the town and the Valley have gotten enough out of the deal. Men like the extra money but they aren't prepared to sacrifice their values to go ahead and close values like trusting their neighbors. People here give homemade goodies to trick or treaters and no one worries if their razorblades in the apples are poison in the popcorn balls. The one for the dog for the dog. We're not without crime but good grief. How many times we go off and leave the door unlocked at home and you know don't even think about it don't even worry about it. Could not have done that in Baltimore at all. But it's becoming clear that people are divided. The deal has revealed a split between the three hundred and forty five people that live in the Half-Way proper and the twelve hundred folks who live outside city limits in

Pine Valley. Valley people can't vote in city elections and they resent the fact that Half-Way got the lion's share of the half that money. I mean they were the ones that struck the deal so that's that's it in a certain sense that's fair. But I don't think it's going to help. It was to keep the fuel out from outside the community not that we were opposed to Half.com but it's nice to have a say or a vote and since we live outside the city limits. We were excluded from that. Turns out that tension has been here a long time but no one talked about it till now. Out in Pine Valley ranchers and artists alike are hoping the second year of the half.com Qandil does more for their needs. But the company isn't talking till after next week when voters in town go to the polls. So the election has become a referendum on the half.com deal.

It's more than we had before. I don't think it affected the town a whole lot. You can see visibly that gave a little spark. Several city councillors are retiring and one Marvin Berggren. But my vote is giving Mayor Dick Crowe a run for his money. Re-elected I think I'll just go on vacation. I hope I don't go backwards. If I'm not re-elected that kind of worries me. Six years of work. Getting things turned around. He'd see in the back. Marvin Bergh draft promises that whatever half dotcom gives the town the next time around will go to projects that help the valley as well as the town. And next time after dark Tom will be back by eBay. Hi guys. Hi. What do you guys think of half happier.

I'm happier with my opinion. I'm sure there's both sides to every story. People outside may make fun make. Well course the piece of. Snow removal equipment that we're talking about $40000 is all that's coming from that not tax. That's what I'm interested in is what's going to happen now. Well we don't know. We all know that dot.com was. Purchased by a. And I'd like to see both. At that time and. I've tried to talk them into putting a base here and hiring a few people. Grant true they got a lot of publicity for nothing basically. Well what nothing that cost them a little bit that it's you know if you put a dollar figure on it I don't want to be. But I think we got a fair fair shake for the first year

and these ensuing years has come and I think that's where we'll reach the harvest. I'd like to I'd like to see the White House any way you know that it would work like I said they're willing to negotiate with us. Let's hope for a school for tenfold. Just go with. Something. I'd be more than happy to be on the committee again and have to figure out how to give away a million bucks instead. But since the year began the dot com boom has busted and the value of eBay stock has dropped by half. A half ways. Dot.com startups didn't have any venture capital behind them. It's a nine foot five weight fly rod zebrawood grip real seat and fighting. But. The Taylor Irus Stutsman crafts custom fishing rods he and most other Hathaways Cabos already had a market for their products before they went on

the Internet. But he's selling more now that he's online. Our business has probably grown 50 percent probably this in the last year maybe 70 percent. And as far as the Internet business probably 40 to 50 percent of our business is Internet business. Seniors at Pine Eagle High School are about to fill out their college applications. There are a lot of scholarships for Baker County kids but they come back home after college. I was lucky I graduated from here and was able to come back spend some time away from here but I ended up getting a job from the school and my family's here. So I'm probably part of a two or three percent that I want to go to college and then. But when I have my kids I want to come back. Some people wouldn't stay here because it's such a little town you can't make that much money if you decide I'm having a big ranch.

And that's what my parents you know they own the store and so maybe I can come back around the store. A family business but I guess I'll see what happens if there was a job though that I could do I would come back here. And the only thing you like is more than gold is liquid gold. Pine Valley kids are rehearsing the play. Rumplestiltskin I can say I can sing your Strudwick go. Where do you. Get. Stuff. Anyway. Well. The plot is a reminder that the bottom line still hasn't changed for the children. Why are we. Let me guess. My. Future hinges on Half-Way improving its economy. Here you go. Your Majesty you get is my child. It was spun from straw. Now.

So when people go to the polls next week they'll be dreaming of an even bigger deal with half.com not just thousands this time but maybe millions. By January 2001 a full year has passed since the city council voted to change half ways name to Half.com. Come on man. Did. He really. Great. Now Mark Hughes is back in town. Your mom's never tired to tell people what to do next. We're taking on Amazon now to why not go up go big go big or go home or Mark Hughes this business deal has turned personal Last month you were the third most transacted side of the

shopping's shopping sites was just amazing. Yeah. You know a year ago when I was out here I would have never dreamed of really what could happen any year. Over the past year Hughes has come back again and again I'm sure you don't want to try something laptops on. Like for the crab feed and march them for the Fourth of July. This trip. Mark Hughes sees the biggest tangible result of the half dot.com deal a second hand snowplough. A town page forty eight thousand dollars. Got it for. Half price. It's beautiful winter driving heavy machinery that Gary why.

Things have changed since Mark Hughes was here last. Night. Mayor Dick Crowe lost the election. This is his retirement party but he's still a city councilor. I want to thank all of you for coming on. Appreciate it. I was replying to Carol so I started out 22 years ago and I guess I can go another few more years. I feel pretty strongly about halfway in the community and I've seen some pretty positive things over the last six years. And thanks to the council members who helped make that a reality. So thank you. Now a new mayor Marvin Berg rap is in charge. Of. Policy and that's always the way all the way all together. So everybody in the office knows what's going on.

He'll preside is halfway and negotiates with Half.com for the second year of the deal. And people want to know how much they'll share in the company's e-bay bonanza. The announcement comes at a special city council meeting in late January. Would you like say a few word. Yeah I'd I'd. Yeah. First of all I guess I'd like to kind of pass the pass your name back to you and say thank you for the use of the name of the city. It quickly becomes clear this was a business deal and now it's over. It's been a lot of publicity for us. And you know that was our intent and we're pretty open about that. And and we just want to say thank you for you know the use of the of the city's name. Instead of a million dollar deal this year Mark Hughes has brought a token

parting gift of twenty thousand dollars. Despite their disappointment people are polite perhaps because they still hope to get a little more out of half.com someday so they can work. I'd like to say thank you from the schools. I'm feeling really good about it. I don't think I can guess. What you're doing tonight. I think it's great. Mark Hughes had only planned on giving the town the check for twenty thousand dollars. But earlier that day there was some real behind the scenes horsetrading mayor of Grogram wanted half.com to do more. Set up some scholarships for Half-Way kids and keep bankrolling local Web sites in the town webmaster. Those requests were impossible to resist once Mark Hughes sat down face to face with city officials. We're really excited David to come and join us. Yeah I thought it was important.

Other that is a phone or something for you to. Show that our relationship is still a long long. Told by that night's meeting. The deal was a lot sweeter. But perhaps the most important thing here Bergh graph one was getting Mark Hughes to agree to serve on the town's brand new. Economic development committee to help him start his. Business. I guess you'd say and. We'd like him to help us start ours. The deal certainly put the company on the map. Hey no kidding. That's not the. Super Bowl 45 on the CBS board of all of the Internet companies that advertised on Super Bowl 2000. Only three did well enough to run new ads on Super Bowl 2001. If the town hadn't agreed to change its name half dot com might have

disappeared. Like a lot of other Dotcom's. Amidst all the carnage the bay and half.com are both survivors. There was a big gold rush mentality people rushing to get onto the Internet you know setting up their business setting up their storefront very similar to the way people rushed out to California and started building or started digging for gold. They didn't have any really well-thought out business plans. Web watcher Glenn Boyd says many failed dot.com sold things you could buy in stores more cheaply and more conveniently. But winners like half.com and ebay use the Internet to connect buyers and sellers who would otherwise never find each other. Glen Boyd says the sudden rise and fall of so many dotcoms shows the limits of e-commerce on Wall Street and on Main Street.

It's going allow more business to happen with say more towns that would have happened before because of e-commerce or because of the Internet. But it doesn't necessarily place anything else that's there before I create massive new markets. As for the town there were no dramatic. Changes. No. Fast. When we all realized that it was just a make believe name change really was a non-issue. Well we asked for stock options initially the initial negotiation with the days that went down pretty quickly. There would have been nice but you have to be realistic. Hafter it was all over and done with. They all loved it. They thought it was a great idea. Want to know when can we do it again. But it took a lot of meetings. And a lot of hurt feelings. One of my dear friends got so mad at me at the meeting. And she's not mad anymore but I mean it took a lot of feelings to get it where it went.

Practically everyone is wired now. Now we're all on Half-Way or dot com and age is no barrier to interest. What do you do. Enrollment is overflowing at webmaster whereas weekly Internet classes. Here's what happened you've got you've got you've got two new folders made actually you've got six Half-Way residents and businesses have internet fever. Marion Dig's bought a second computer and launched a second web site. We got to tell people there are still viral Waldron's got a Web business doing accounting and writing poetry to order rips on your mouse. Rob Hough is getting Pintail ready. Why are people in Baker this spring. So you clicked on a hotlink. Rassmussen is keeping his llama trekking business small. That mouse controls just so important. Ira Stutsman has hired two part time workers. They're very good at Excellent.

Turns out the most successful e-businesses are the ones which captured the charm of Half-Way. Everybody's been Dalet and I haven't but. But you know that's not it doesn't have the appeal that that halfway house halfway is this place most people remembered as their vacation spot. It's a happy thought. By now 70 businesses are online in a town of just 350 people. More businesses than anyone even knew existed. So e-commerce is clearly a way to tweak the town's economy but it's not a gold mine. And while the official half dot.com deal may be over. Mark Hughes is still involved. I guess it's you know it's kind of pulled at my heartstrings a little bit. You know you get attached to people on to the concept. OK so we have please come up and write your project ideas on here. And you guys get up get out of your chairs Let's go. Yes.

Ma'am. Thank you. Now there's one last check from half.com to spend just $20000. Water Resource enhancement and pipes would probably have never finished irrigators too. My thought was we'll be able to attract more businesses into town if we had something besides crumbling buildings snow removal and storage. Maybe pooters and maybe an indoor swimming pool and it's only money that our kids need something to do. If you don't want them getting in trouble on the streets or abandon lising things or whatever you need to give them something to do. You don't have to keep our park was present at once before daring to have dot.com proposals. Kids want do this. I talk to a lot more than four people who said that they would like it. This money will be spent by people from the town and the valley. Assisted Living Facility. This is for senior citizens is that correct.

There is a lot of us are we're going to need that. And we made a good one. I don't want to go somewhere else. I want to stay here in the valley or die here. So I want to stay here until I die. In the end the deal really didn't bring in all that much money at least not compared to the 335 million dollars half dot.com got. But people here are a step ahead a year ahead of other rural towns. And while Wall Street was discovering that e-commerce is really just another way to sell things. People here found out it can also liberate them to live wherever and however they want. Even the biggest critic of the half.com Qandil is a fan of

e-commerce. We're rapidly coming to a time if we're not already there. That people that live in the metropolitan areas. And computers or their business are going to be able to come out and live in places like the US with their families and maybe every couple of weeks. That her mom whoever it is will jump in the car and zoom off to Portland to have a meeting at the office or to Boise or wherever. And I see that. As being positive because it brings family wage incomes into the biling brings young people I think that would be great. I mean I think that probably that will start to happen. And people see that e-commerce may be a way to preserve what really matters. To me that's what e-commerce offers. It offers people in the remote area like ours where anytime you have a phone line you can reach out to the whole world.

And. Not many people have on their resume renamed to town. That's a good thing. Funding for production of the Oregon story was made possible through a generous grant from the United States Department of Agriculture rural development. Come to find out he wasn't making any deposits at the bank. So all the deposits I gave

him he was just hanging on to I was a real con man. Before he left. Alberts told everyone he wanted to stage the music man. The story of a con man out to fleece a small town in Iowa that we never got our music production the stranger from half.com wasn't selling a boys band but a deal about bandwidth. Still people remembered Al Bourke's And here we were again. You're like lot of people saying well they're going to take advantage of us and rip us off again. Pull. Out. Some sort and to ends. It'll be fun. I'm looking forward to.

Summer always ends with a bang. The Labor Day weekend fair and Rodeo. You don't hear too much grumbling about tourism this week and it's the biggest economic event of the year. You will be amazed. By now the selection committee has awarded all of half Dotcom's money. You things that I know noticed about this book. Maybe the fair itself got a thousand dollars. You know our whole criteria was just to make sure that it affected the most people