Special to the HT
I decided to write this before time erases words like handset, Princess phone, landline, hand crank, party line and phone booth. Everyone is addicted to their current device. It is permanently glued to every teenager’s palm.
Phones have been part of our culture in Meeker since 1900. Once Meeker had its first dynamo electric plant, the stage was set for telephone service.
A telephone line between Rifle and Meeker was already in operation when the Western Slope Telephone Company arrived from the north. J.C. Davis of the Hugus Company was secretary of the W.S.T.C. The new line connected Meeker to Craig and Steamboat Springs. Telephones were also planned at stage stops on 9-Mile Hill and at Axial.
Meeker’s first switchboard was installed by the Western Slope Telephone Company in the back of Strehlke’s Drug Store. There were two operators to cover the day and night shifts.
In 1905, the Western Slope Telephone Company dissolved, and the Colorado Telephone Co. took over the Meeker exchange. The January 1905 Steamboat Sentinel reported: “The Colorado Telephone Company, since taking over the Western Slope line, has reduced the price of talking, and also the time of each talk over the line has been cut down from five minutes to three, which is enough for anybody, even a woman.”
Will Purdy was one of the first managers of the Meeker exchange, serving from 1906-1939. He transferred from Grand Junction with the Colorado Telephone Company and also served as an operator and line repairman.
Purdy and a crew would often take a horse and wagon out to find a broken wire or replace a glass insulator that some rowdy cowboy had shot to pieces. In the Dec. 7, 1901, issue of the Meeker Herald, the telephone company offered a $50 reward for the apprehension and conviction of the smart alecks shooting insulators on telephone poles.
The first telephones were primarily used for business — doctors, druggists and newspapers. Phone numbers in Meeker were only two to four digits during the 1920s.
A telephone in 1910 was typically a wooden box mounted on a wall. The receiver was a black, flared piece attached to a cord. You held the large end to your ear and spoke into the transmitter, which was mounted on an adjustable stalk. You used it standing up.
There was a crank handle on the side. Turning the crank operated a magneto, which created a current strong enough to ring a bell at the telephone exchange.
An operator, usually a woman, would answer your ring and ask whom you wanted to reach. You could give her a phone number or simply the name of a local person or business. The operator then physically connected your pair of wires to an outgoing pair using a short jumper cord with plugs on each end.
The “switchboard” was often a vertical panel covered with a grid of numbered jack holes.
If you want an idea of how this worked, look up a video of Lily Tomlin on the TV comedy Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. Tomlin portrayed Ernestine, a telephone operator, gossip and dispenser of unwanted advice.
The White River Museum has some wonderful displays of old telephones and telephone equipment.
Sources: Meeker Herald, Feb. 11, 1965; ColoradoHistoricNewspapers.org; Britannica.com; Rio Blanco County Historical Society; This Is What I Remember books; TelecomHistory.org.