A small group of interested residents met to discuss this problem.  Out of the series of meetings that followed grew the HERD Community Network, Inc.  HERD gets its name from the acronym formed by the towns within its service area: Hermon, Edwards, Russell and DeKalb.

In the beginning, we had two primary goals.  The first was to provide Internet access to the community, at a reasonable cost and without a long distance telephone charge.  The second was to give the towns of our area a presence on the World Wide Web.

The ISPs who provided service to other parts of the north country at that time didn't see the potential for our area.  We did.  Even we didn't realize, however, how much was out there for us and for the Internet in general.  We first went on-line, both as an ISP and as a web site on June 1, 1996.  Originally, the organizers had hoped to provide Internet access for 50 to 75 households.  As time went on, HERD grew.  As we grew, problems developed.  Being a small, grass roots organization, our resources, both financial and manpower, were limited.  Over the next two years, our membership swelled to over 225.  Only a handful of volunteers were involved and it became too much for them to handle.

The Board of Directors at that time started looking into options.  It was decided that it would be in the best interest of the community to let a commercial ISP take over that aspect of HERD.  On July 27, 1998, we entered into an agreement with TDSNET who now provides Internet access locally to our service area.  In addition, they provide us with free hosting for the HERD website.

Today, HERD is a registered non-profit organization.  Since the beginning, we provided a website for the area.  Now, our primary function is to serve as an on-line promoter for our towns, through our web site.