Editor’s word: This article was produced with help from the Training Writers Affiliation Reporting Fellowship program.
In a state filled with rural, tucked away corners, Lincoln County is considered one of Montana’s most rural and tucked away.
The county of 20,000 folks is situated within the state’s far northwest nook, bordering Canada and Idaho’s panhandle. Its communities are dotted across the Kootenai Nationwide Forest, whose 2.2 million acres of firs, pines, spruces and towering mountains outline the craggy panorama.
Libby, the county seat of three,100 residents, is 69 miles from Eureka, the county’s second-biggest metropolis of 1,500 residents.
Lincoln County is rural and rugged, cast by business and ecology and steeped in a sophisticated historical past of extraction, exploitation and financial battle. It’s a place the place everybody is aware of somebody who is aware of your cousin — a spot the place the longer term remains to be being dug out of the previous.
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Montana’s altering financial system is palpable in Lincoln County, the place formidable mills and mines as soon as powered its small cities. The world was a historic powerhouse of timber and vermiculite manufacturing earlier than shifts within the pure useful resource financial system within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s marked the closure of almost each native timber plant and Libby’s vermiculite mine, leaving 1000’s unemployed.
On the vermiculite mine, staff for many years have been uncovered to lethal asbestos fibers that killed a whole bunch, and trains carrying asbestos merchandise blew poisonous chemical compounds throughout city. As of 2021, 694 Libby residents had died of asbestos associated illnesses. The mine’s proprietor, the W.R. Grace Firm, saved staff at the hours of darkness concerning the risks of asbestos publicity.
It’s below the shadow of the shuttered mills and mines that Lincoln County is forging forward, crafting a future that neighborhood leaders hope will honor its historical past whereas breaking free from its dependence on extractive industries. On the heart of that future is a local people faculty, which helps Lincoln County residents adapt to a courageous new world, constructing careers near dwelling and granting them a as soon as elusive future locally that raised them.
It’s a future that, in response to Megan Rayome, the director of the faculty, is constructed on the premise that Lincoln County “hasn’t been left to die.”
“It was virtually like a assured job,” Kathy Ness, government director of the Eureka Chamber of Commerce, mentioned of the logging business in Lincoln County.
On an early summer season day within the small city, Ness recounted her personal journey to Eureka.
Ness “married in” to Eureka, settling within the city together with her husband who was raised there. She’s been in Eureka for 45 years, a interval throughout which she watched the financial system ebb and movement, together with her husband’s now lengthy gone profession as a logger. Her kids and grandchildren have largely left dwelling, in search of jobs in greater markets. Whereas they’d like to return dwelling, “There’s not so much in Eureka,” Ness mentioned.
After a long time of sturdy timber markets in Montana, a confluence of native and international components started to sluggish the business’s manufacturing in Lincoln County. Overharvesting led to a downturn in timber availability on Nationwide Forest land. Financial uncertainty within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s pressured fluctuations in demand. Environmental litigation shut down operations. 4 mills in Lincoln County shut down between 1993 and 2005, leaving greater than 500 residents with out work.
Following the closure of Libby’s vermiculite mine in 1991, the county’s unemployment fee reached 29%. A decade later, after Libby’s Stimson Lumber Mill closed in 2002, unemployment hit 15.8%.
“It was very damaging to the general psyche,” Rayome, who grew up in Libby, mentioned.
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Rayome is the director of Flathead Valley Neighborhood School’s (FVCC) Lincoln County Campus (LCC). LCC is a satellite tv for pc campus of FVCC, which for 4 a long time has supplied profession coaching and faculty programs to native college students. It’s a small campus, boasting seven staff who work in its sole constructing close to downtown Libby.
As a child, Rayome remembers when the U.S. Environmental Safety Company arrange store in Libby within the late Nineteen Nineties, tearing up lawns and attics to be able to take away poisonous asbestos. She remembers her father, a former miner, attending lessons at LCC to be taught laptop abilities in hopes of constructing a brand new profession. She generally attended lessons with him when he couldn’t discover childcare.
Rayome additionally remembers transferring to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, throughout her youth in order that her mom might pursue a level in nursing. Whereas crucial for her mom’s profession, the transfer was disruptive for Rayome, who had identified nothing however Libby her complete life.
“I didn’t take pleasure in that my mother moved me from my childhood dwelling,” she mentioned. “It’s a small city the place you’ve gotten the identical associates and your loved ones is all there. It was troublesome for us, in plenty of alternative ways, for our household.”
Rayome completed highschool in Idaho, then moved to Arizona for faculty, the place she earned her bachelor’s and regulation levels from Arizona State College.
Whereas in Arizona, Rayome examine how folks from rural communities who sought superior levels have been usually pressured to depart dwelling to take action, many by no means returning. The phenomenon, usually referred to as rural “mind drain,” caught together with her. She knew she wanted to return to Lincoln County.
After regulation college, Rayome returned to Libby to apply regulation. When LCC wanted a director in 2020, she jumped on the alternative.
Lincoln County’s first faculty program was born in 1979, after a gaggle of native stakeholders recognized a necessity for a college-level course in supervisory and administration abilities to satisfy business wants. The coalition of native residents partnered with FVCC in Kalispell to carry a supervisory administration certificates to Libby the subsequent yr. It proved so profitable that the Libby Chamber of Commerce fashioned a committee to analyze increasing larger training.
4 years later, FVCC and the county reached an settlement to open a satellite tv for pc campus in Libby. LCC lessons have been initially held in native excessive colleges earlier than the faculty discovered a house in an old style constructing on Mineral Avenue.
By 1987, the campus enrolled 73 full-time college students, starting from youngsters to middle-aged moms heading again to work. In line with native reporting, the campus’ “bread and butter” was non-traditional faculty college students, together with those that have been in search of job modifications, dealing with career-altering accidents or rebounding from layoffs. By 1994, enrollment had risen to 150 college students.
A monetary dispute between LCC and FVCC’s primary campus in Kalispell almost severed the universities’ ties within the late Nineteen Nineties, however the campuses have been in a position to make amends.
In 2002, LCC moved to its present constructing, which was previously occupied by the U.S. Forest Service.
“For the primary time within the historical past of the LCC, we are going to tackle the picture of being a viable faculty in Libby and Lincoln County,” interim director George Gerard informed the Every day Inter Lake on the time of the transfer.
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LCC Director Pat Pezzelle in 2004 made native headlines after showing at a board assembly just about — a rarity on the time — via the campus’s first interactive, video teleconferencing (ITV) tools. The gap studying classroom additional expanded entry for rural college students. It was acquired via a $350,000 grant championed by then-U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns.
In line with faculty leaders, LCC’s success has been grounded in a collective influence framework that designs applications from the bottom up, somewhat than the highest down. It’s a mannequin that responds on to business wants, carving out diploma applications with native relevance and, for graduates, long-term financial advantages.
After the Stimson Timber layoffs in 2002, faculty leaders vowed to retrain Libby’s almost 300 displaced staff.
“Now we have to determine what sort of coaching we will present to make these folks employable,” LCC teacher and advisor Chad Shilling mentioned at a employees assembly after the closure, in response to newspaper archives. “I don’t know in the event that they’re going to be right here for the long-term dedication, however we’re going to be right here to handle their rapid wants the very best we will.”
FVCC President Jane Karas mentioned she has “a number of these sorts of tales” about locals who confirmed up on the faculty’s door jobless and left with a brand new profession.
Karas described one pupil who, earlier than being laid off by the Owens and Hurst Mill in Eureka within the mid-2000s, had “by no means executed something however run logs via this mill.” After enrolling in FVCC, he accomplished a level in laptop science and went to work in IT.
In 2011, the faculty educated its first batch of welders via a 10-week program that catered to staff who had been laid off from mining and timber jobs. This system was designed to position staff at Stinger Welding, an Arizona-based bridge constructing firm that introduced 70 jobs to Libby earlier than its closure in 2013.
When Kalispell-based Nomad International Communication Options (GCS) introduced its growth into Libby in 2022, the necessity for welders and machinists grew. LCC labored with the native college district to launch a night welding class at Libby Excessive College. In its first-class, the faculty stuffed seven of eight welding cubicles with keen learners from all walks of life.
By the Operating Begin twin enrollment program, eight Libby Excessive College college students this spring handed their 3G 3/8 Welding Qualification in a college-level course. Many mentioned they plan to broaden their abilities subsequent yr in pursuit of the 6G check.
With their welding certification, Karas mentioned, college students are filling the necessity for expert staff that new business has dropped at Lincoln County.
“We deal with easy methods to be most cost-effective, help our neighborhood and meet the wants of our college students and our employers,” Karas mentioned.
“What the faculty did, that’s extraordinarily necessary by way of working with smaller rural communities, is to exit and set up a relationship,” Lisa Clean, government director of workforce growth for FVCC, mentioned. “Not ready for them to return to you, however you going out to them.”
Clean acts because the conduit between FVCC, companies, the Montana Division of Labor and Business, public colleges and college students, all of whom have a vested curiosity within the faculty’s profession applications. Her job was created particularly to streamline communication between these stakeholders.
“There have been a number of issues occurring on campus — nice alternatives — however they weren’t essentially synergistic or built-in,” Clean mentioned. “One of many duties that this place was given was to provide you with a strategy to combine the trouble in order that we will higher leverage it for using college students.”
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Clean sought out grants to broaden LCC’s capability in welding, industrial driving and Pc Numerical Management (CNC) machining following the expansions of Nomad GCS and Alpine Precision into Lincoln County. She helped to create a completely on-line land surveying program, which is able to start this fall. She labored with the Montana Logging Affiliation to purchase a $100,000 state-of-the-art forestry simulator to organize college students for jobs in logging.
Clean says the faculty is the “linchpin” that holds collectively stakeholders in Lincoln County, however that it’s not alone. Clean works carefully with the Libby College District, Libby Job Service, the Division of Labor and corporations in fields from healthcare to heavy machining.
“Everybody must be on the desk,” she mentioned.
For Rayome and LCC directors, the faculty’s work goes past growing arduous abilities. It’s an establishment that breaks down most of the limitations to larger training confronted by rural college students.
“Being rural is tough,” mentioned Tabitha Viergutz, a longtime Libby resident and the area people officer for the LOR Basis, a neighborhood growth fund that works in small cities throughout the West.
Sitting in a mixed espresso store and carpet retailer in downtown Libby, Viergutz described her personal arc on the faculty, one which introduced her to her present work locally.
Viergutz moved to Libby 13 years in the past as a nail technician. Unable to get her esthetician enterprise off the bottom, she struggled to feed her household. She determined to enroll in LCC with the objective of incomes an associates diploma in social work. Whereas on the faculty, she took a mix of in-person and digital lessons via the ITV system, which she described as “superb.” When LOR wanted a neighborhood chief to run its Libby department, mentors from the faculty tapped Viergutz.
“I wouldn’t have gone again to varsity had LCC not been right here,” she mentioned.
Viergutz’s story is frequent in Libby. A younger mom, the thought of transferring to Missoula or Kalispell for faculty was out of the query. The price of full-time enrollment was daunting. So, too, was the thought of changing into a non-traditional pupil in a conventional classroom setting.
Earlier than monetary assist — which, FVCC officers word, there may be loads of — a full semester of tuition and costs for an in-district pupil at LCC prices $2,810. Comparatively, an in-state resident on the College of Montana in the identical semester can pay $4,273. At Carroll School, a non-public college in Helena, a semester prices $20,066 earlier than assist.
“While you develop into a resident of a small, rural space, that’s the place your coronary heart lies,” she mentioned. “The thought of going to a big faculty simply isn’t within the playing cards.”
Jayne Downey, director of the Middle for Analysis on Rural Training at Montana State College, mentioned that past being smaller and extra reasonably priced, rural schools like LCC are ready to attract on the “distinctive strengths and belongings” of their small cities, constructing curriculum and getting ready college students for careers in a method that’s rooted in particular neighborhood wants.
“These smaller graduating lessons, all people is aware of all people. You might be identified. You might be cared for. Your tutorial wants could be addressed individually,” she mentioned. “The locations the place our colleges are located — the communities are a wealth of information and sources, of historical past and tradition, of science and know-how. It surrounds them.”
Viergutz is an unofficial spokesperson for the brand new Libby. She mentioned the city is “altering our focus to what we’ve got versus what we misplaced.”
Libby’s first brewery, Cupboard Mountain Brewing Firm, simply celebrated its tenth anniversary. A kickboxing studio got here to city final fall. Within the new Kootenai Enterprise Park, a former Stimson Lumber facility, there’s a pickleball court docket and a big Nomad GCS workplace. Greenback Normal is now in Libby and Eureka.
“I believe that Libby remains to be very a lot ingrained in our historical past, and really a lot would like to see these industries come again,” Viergutz mentioned of mining and timber. But, she added, there’s “a ahead dealing with view on actuality.”
Rayome mentioned Nomad GCS’s arrival on the town “elevated the upward spiral of hope.”
“We’re seeing folks not simply coming in to ogle at our unhappiness,” Rayome mentioned.
Clean, FVCC’s workforce growth director, mentioned the way forward for LCC’s success lies not simply in coaching staff, however in growing native leaders who can spearhead applications and assist recruit a subsequent technology. Cultivating homegrown management is a part of the neighborhood resilience mannequin that Clean bases her work off of.
“We wish to construct management in these communities,” she mentioned. “They know what they want most, and they’ll at all times know higher as a result of they stay there.”
Sooner or later, Rayome hopes to open a devoted constructing at LCC for hands-on trades training. She needs to put money into new know-how, revamping the faculty’s ITV infrastructure. Like Clean, she needs to proceed to foster leaders who have been born and raised in Libby — those that wish to assist the city transfer into the longer term. As extra jobs arrive, so too will demand for eating places, healthcare services, houses, colleges and the employees who energy them. It’s all a part of the “upward spiral of hope” that she described. Although will probably be difficult, Rayome mentioned, Lincoln County will adapt to a brand new financial future.
“They’re doers. They imagine in themselves,” she mentioned of Libby. “It’s a neighborhood of survivors.”
