This is a fascinating thread....
The Montain Bell long lines access to Durango was via open wire toll line over the mountains from Ouray, not via the RGS (there were only ever two Morse wires along the RGS, No. 1 [RR wire, Ridgway to Durango} and WU wire 102 that took battery at Grand Jct, came down via the D&RG to Ridgway, thence over the RGS to WU Durango terminating there on battery).
Regarding old multi-party rural telephone lines...
I remember the number of the phone at my grandparent's farm a few miles west of Fowler Colorado in the 1940's and 1950's...
The number was 019J3...It was on a five or six party common battery open wire line from the Fowler Bell telephone manual switchboard in town.
The ring code for our farm was three long rings for incoming calls.
It was strictly a manual system...To place an ougoing call, You took the phone offhook and the operator in Fowler would say "Number Please" and you would give her the number, then she plugged in and rang the called party's phone and connected you to whoever you wanted.
The telephone instrument at our farm was a Western Electric "candlestick" style that was kept on a high shelf in the farmhouse kitchen near a window and rocking chair where my grandma liked to sit and knit. There was a long string with a pencil tied to the end of it hanging down from the phone stand hookswitch.
Grandma would sit in her rocking chair there during quiet afternoons and after holding down the hookswitch, take the receiver off the hook and put it down on the rocking chair back by her ear, while holding the hookswitch down with the string.
When someone else's ring code came along, she would gently let the string go up and get the phone offhook so she could listen in on whatever the converstion over the line was...A great pastime for most of those ladies in the farms along the line...
You could hear the distant party's voice level drop as the other phones along the line came offhook while you were talking on it as others began to listen in...No privacy there!
