Slate.com has a regular feature called The Vault in which they write about interesting historical documents unearthed in libraries and archival collections. This week's entry is a map of the Bell Telephone System from 1909. I found it very interesting and I expect others here will enjoy it as well.
Slate.com: "A Telephone Map of the United States Shows Where You Could Call Using Ma Bell in 1910"
What is immediately obvious to me is how many telephone lines of the era followed railroads. For example, if you zoom in on Maine, in the western part of the state there is a local telephone line running from Farmington to Strong and Rangeley, with a branch going to Kingfield. This is obviously following the SR&RL.
The other thing that jumps out at me is how strangely uneven the coverage was in the Western US. If you look at narrow gauge country in CO and NM, Chama appears to have had no telephone service at all, even while little Tres Piedras on the Chili line was connected from the south via Willets and Taos. And am I interpreting the map correctly that Durango's telephone connection was from the north and west via Montrose and Ridgway along the RGS? How bizarre! What's more, Arizona appears to have been completely isolated, while Nevada had almost no telephone service to speak of.
There is much food for thought here.
-Philip Marshall
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2015 02:45AM by philip.marshall.