The Jicarilla Apache Nation is located in beautiful north central New Mexico. The town of Dulce is the headquarters for the reservation and houses most of the Apache people.
The Jicarilla Apache Nation had a dream that one day they would have the means of communication because of their remote location. In the past the people who lived on the reservation had poor reception via television and radio stations. If they wanted to hear the news or any type of entertainment they had to listen to stations that had weak signals in this area. The Nation then developed a new tribal program that would resolve this problem. The program was called the Jicarilla Communications program which soon had access to a local public television channel and several translators so that the local people could watch stations like NBC, CBS and Fox. Soon after came the planning stages for a local radio station. The Jicarilla Communications program then applied for a non-commercial radio station license with the Federal Communications Commission. To their surprise they were granted a license for a 100-watt non-commercial radio station. Then came the next step and that was to figure out where they were going to get the funding for this new project. At first it seemed impossible but then they started looking for funding and found a federal program called the P.T.F.P., a program that offered matching grants for public radio stations. The program was once again surprised because they were awarded a grant and with the tribes match, they had the funding to finally get this project rolling. Although the Jicarilla Communications program had the idea of hosting a television and radio station in the same facility, the program split into two individual tribal departments.
After countless hours in the planning stages, KCIE 90.5 fm went on the air for the very first time on December 3, 1990. The Jicarilla public radio station now offers a variety of educational programming, national and local news, sports and musical entertainment for the community in this remote little town of Dulce.
