Based in Garden City, Kansas, High Plains Public Radio is the only public radio station serving the five-state, mostly rural High Plains region. After Congress cut $1 billion to public broadcasting, its founders say a grant to create a brand-new network for local news and information arrived with serendipitous timing.

Kathleen Holt reminisces about her final moment inside the original High Plains Public Radio studios.

It was a former schoolhouse in tiny Pierceville, 16 miles south and east of Garden City. She remembers the bare nature of that first studio; desks were made from donated concrete blocks and discarded doors.

It was the late 1980s, and she had just helped her colleagues move to the new studios in Garden City. Holt and a team of volunteers had raised $600,000 at the time to p

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