cst.net is my website. I am geologist, geophycist, computer scientist, and businessman. My name is Chris Salmon, full name Raymond Christopher Salmon. I am the founder of one of the first internet companies in Texas, Cyberstation, Inc.
I started Cyberstation at the dawn of the commercial, in 1994. As a boy growing up on a remote Texas cattle ranch he began building electronic kits, ham radio gear and home computers in the mid-1970s. By age 16 in 1978, I had gotten I got my first job as a programmer, coding lockbox systems for the trust departments of banks. That year my SAT scores were high enough that I was accepted into the University of Texas at Arlington, without finishing high school, or having any secondary school credential. No high school and no senior year of high school. I later changed from UTA to Midwestern State.
A decade of university life and adventure, being a ski bum in Vail, Colorado, performing and recording on guitar, bass, percussion and vocals with rock and jazz bands, teaching geology laboratories at the university, and cycling across the USA without support followed.
After graduating from Midwestern State University with a B.S. in Geology and another almost a second major (lacking one math class) in Computer Science, I worked as a programmer, geophysicist and environmental geologist. While working as a geophysicist in the world’s largest non-military supercomputing facility in Houston, I was exposed to the global computer communications network called ARPANet, which we now know as the Internet.
Moving back up to North Texas to work with my father, noted petroleum engineer and oil producer Raymond Salmon. I felt disconnected from the science and tech world without an internet connection, like the one I had used for years in Dallas and Houston. With the opening of the internet to commercial use in 1992, and the development of the first graphical internet browser in 1993, I foresaw that the internet would soon change the world, and I knew it was happening and that Wichita Falls desperately needed this and wanted to be a part of it. Seeing an opportunity in I put together a business plan and all the technical design to open the first internet service provider in the entire region of Texas from Dallas to Amarillo, then growing to cover a 5 state region with our partner IP Communications connected to our network. It was incredible for us!
I successfully brought the first internet services – connectivity, websites, email, chat, video, gaming, business communications, VPN’s, etc., to a huge region of Texas, and 5 other states. A region that had so little communications infrastructure, that a storm knocking over a single microwave tower could cut whole counties and cities off from the outside world for weeks, as happened in 1996. I began with 8 modems and one server, hired winning people and bought equipment and grew. I personally grew that business up to one that had 5-state dialup, broadband, and high speed business coverage available across my network. IP Communications became a partner in 1999, a large DLEC that also hired me as a consultant to design and build their internet services and server infrastructure. When the huge national phone companies and cable companies came in and took over the internet access market after the dot-com crash of early 2000’s, I kept one employee and kept a small part of his company together building travel and resort websites.
The next couple of years was spent traveling all over the USA to film and write and review and document the experiences travelers who visited the destinations could expect. CST had websites for 52 different resort markets and reserved travel, hotels and car rentals through the website services. During this time I also won a contract to do internet protocol engineering for AT&T on a global basis, working from his home office in Vail, Colorado.
I retired from the internet and technology business in 2011 and began to help my father with the family ranch and other interests. The senior Mr. Salmon passed away in 2016 and the ranch and other business interests are now owned by Chris and his sister, Katie, who lives in Dallas, Texas.
I currently (temporary due to COVID) reside in South Lake Tahoe, California and work for our oil, ranching and financial interests.
I welcomes contact with many different and varied kinds of people, please send him a message here: