Hundreds of lineworkers contracted by Western Union began erecting a telegraph line between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California in July 1861. Half started at each end — a team in California, and a team in Missouri — the men began erecting poles and wires designed to meet in the middle of Utah. Their work was done ahead of schedule in just four months and established the first connection between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts’ respective regional telegraph networks. Upon completion, the first message was wired to President Lincoln:
The message from Horace W. Carpentier, president of the Overland Telegraph Co., read:
“I announce to you that the telegraph to California has this day been completed. May it be a bond of perpetuity between the states of the Atlantic and those of the Pacific.”
The telegraph as a technology would be relatively short-lived. George Freeland Durant came to St. Louis in 1874 to fill the position of district manager for the American District Telegraph Company (ADTC). Alexander Graham Bell’s new-fangled telephone technology fascinated Durant, who, along with Julius C. Birge, began buying up several handmade telephones in 1877 to experiment.
The duo tried plugging the phones into the existing telegraph lines and, to their delight, it worked. Not only did the telephone carry their voice, but it could be worked into the existing telegraph network crisscrossing the country.
Durant and Birge’s experiment caught the attention of Bell Telephone Company’s H.H. Eldred, who had been expanding phone service across the East Coast.
Near the end of 1877, Durant obtained a license from the Bell Telephone Company to sell phone service in St. Louis — then the fourth largest city in America — through ADTC, and by 1878 he had officially opened the first telephone exchange in the state.
Telephone exchanges — large buildings where wires connected into a central hub — were built in St. Joseph, Kansas City, Hannibal, and Fulton, Missouri. Within fifteen years, telephone service extended across vast stretches of Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas. The humble operation started with 12 subscribers. By 1890, there were 2,885 subscribers.
Phone company consolidation begins
In the annals of American telecommunications, the evolution of the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company stands as a testament to the relentless pursuit of connectivity that characterized the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Missouri and Kansas Telephone Company was organized in 1882, a pioneering endeavor that sought to bridge the vast expanses of the American Midwest.
By March 1, 1912, a significant consolidation occurred, uniting the Missouri and Kansas Telephone Company with the Southwestern Telegraph and Telephone Company of Texas and Arkansas, the Pioneer Telephone and Telegraph Company of Oklahoma, and The Bell Telephone Company of Missouri. This amalgamation formed the “Southwestern System” of the Bell System, a strategic alignment designed to enhance service and operational efficiency across a burgeoning network.
The year 1917 marked a pivotal transformation as these entities legally merged into the Missouri and Kansas Telephone Company, which promptly adopted the name Southwestern Bell Telephone Company to fit the newly expanded territory they now covered.
Telephones reach Warren County
Telephone service spread rapidly across the country with lines piggybacking off existing rail lines, forming a hub-and-spoke network of communication, transit, and commerce dictated by the size and volume of the local railroad depot.
We don’t know precisely when telephone service first reached Warren County, but it was likely as early as 1897 that the Wright City Train Depot had a phone booth. Train conductors routinely used the new system to signal delays or issues ahead to other stations and were generally not open to the public. Warrenton’s smaller depot likely only received one a year or so later.
The technology held promise and fascinated people. Missouri’s first long-distance telephone line was completed between Cape Girardeau and Jackson on December 18, 1877. A telephone was installed in the Warrenton School House in April 1902, suggesting telephone service was working through larger public buildings by the turn of the century.1 The first residences also got in on the new phone technology. Norman Boon had a phone installed in June 1907.2 The new technology usually reached select government and public buildings and large businesses before residences.
In June 1904, the first of a special ordinance was adopted in Warrenton for city-wide phone service installation rights, as published in the Warrenton Banner3:
An ordinance granting a Franchise and permission to the Citizens Telephone Company of the City of Warrenton in the County of Warren, State of Missouri: Be it ordained by the Board of Aldermen of the City of Warrenton, Warren County, Missouri.
Sec. (L)-That the Citizens Telephone Company, (Albert L. Shire, prop.) hereinafter called the Grantee, his successors and assigns be, and he is hereby granted the right of way through, over, in and upon such public streets, alleys and public grounds of the City of Warrenton, Warren County, Missouri, for the use and purpose therein and thereon to erect, maintain and use all necessary poles, posts and arm brackets of wood or iron or other suitable materials for the necessary wires and cables, to successfully operate, maintain and use a telephone exchange in the City of Warrenton aforesaid.
Growing pains with new phone technology
In 1905, it was reported Wright City would get an exciting new telephone exchange building, which could speed up call connections and improve audio since exchanges served as “repeaters” to amplify the voice quality. The Marthasville Record proudly asked, “Wright City is to have a telephone exchange. What’s the matter with Marthasville?” Wright City would get an upgrade to their repeater station around 1930.
The rapid rollout of telephone lines had detractors. Railroad operators developed a reputation for “a lack of civility,” presumably as more and more residents began calling local depots to ask whether the trains were on time. No doubt the influx of calls proved annoying to ordinary train agents. In 1911, Republican Missouri Governor Herbert Hadley signed a bill requiring railroad companies to install phones in all their stations and require agents to “give as accurate information as they have about the expected arrival and departure of trains.”4
By 1912 phone service had been installed across half of all railways in the US, reducing the need to train specialists in telegraphy (Morse Code), and as the Wabash Railroad said5:
“The train Dispatcher can handle his work more easily and expeditiously by reason of the quickness with which communications may be passed, he can keep up his train sheet and the instruments are so arranged that he has both hands free for employment, which is not possible with a telegraph instrument. Many times, when necessary, the Train Dispatcher talks direct with conductors and engineers on the road and is thus able to secure more accurate and quick knowledge.”
Telephone wires also worked better in rain and wet weather and were more resilient against electrical and trolley line interference. The Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad began installing phone lines in 1913, further expanding the network to more communities.6
To operate all the criss-crossing signals, Bell phone companies began hiring people to operate switchboards. They started by hiring young men, but discovered they were too prone to pranks, so they switched to women in what would become one of the few technical jobs available to women. Local resident Jan Mittler Lutz remembers her great-grandmother, grandmother, and her great aunt ran the telephone office in Wright City across generations. “They were the local switchboard operators. My grandmother always said that it was a mixed blessing. They were able to share happy news, but also were the first ones many times to deliver a frantic call to the doctor or to have to let someone know that their loved one had passed,” she recalls.
With hundreds of people around the county and region using the new phone service for business and pleasure, a directory was soon needed to know whom you could call. In May 1924, Otto Eisenstein, manager of the Warrenton Phone Company, began preparing a new directory.7 It would be printed within a week, and businesses could also take out an advertisement.
Residential phone service expands in Warren County after WWII
The Warren County Recorder’s Office shows residential phone service expanded dramatically around the end of World War II. In 1947, Paul Carter, Claude Carter, and Augusta Carter set up a corporation to provide telephone service to Warrenton, Wright City and neighboring Jonesburg, Missouri in Montgomery County. The brothers paid $25,000 for the rights and were backed by W.O. Norman and City National Bank (Kansas City).
The Carters sold off assets in 1952 when their company dissolved. Maurice and Bernice Yeager set up a corporation the same year but only in Warrenton. J.C. and Gladys Torbett set up a business to cover Wright City and Jonesburg, and George Wilson and Bailey Rigg setup a network in and around Marthasville.
It’s believed the Torbetts eventually merged all the local networks together under the name Midwestern Telephone Company until it, too, was merged with the larger Continental Telephone, operating under the name ConTel. ConTel Corporation was the third-largest independent phone company in the United States prior to its acquisition by GTE in 1991. GTE was acquired by Bell Atlantic in 2000, which soon changed its name to Verizon and marked a re-merger of the old Southwest and Atlantic Bell networks.
By the late 20th century, it seemed most everyone in the country was part of the infamous Bell network, but not Warrenton or Wright City, which were served by GTE along with large swaths of the rural Midwest. However, Wright City did play a major part in Bell’s heyday network since the Bell Network that runs between St. Louis and Kansas City required repeaters to boost long-distance voice signals. Four buildings ran along present-day I-70, one of which was located in the present-day Freedom Bank building.
“One of the ways the smaller phone companies made much of their revenue was through AT&T,” recalls Jack Dixon, a retiree of ConTel. “Phone companies had legal rights to their exchanges, and no other company could come within the boundary of these exchanges and compete against them. There was no competition! Therefore, the Bell systems had all major cities tied up, so any homeowner or business that was within their boundaries could only get phone service through Bell. AT&T was the long-distance company and connected all of these towns and cities to traverse all calls from one town to another — and AT&T owned the Bell Systems!
Dixon adds, “However, AT&T’s cables ran through nearly every town in America and these rural towns were often operated by a non-Bell, non-AT&T company. Because of this, the government required that AT&T pay these rural independent companies a portion of their revenue based on call volume, plus the number of cable pairs and the miles of cable that traverse through these exchanges owned by these independent telephone companies. This was a huge part of the smaller network’s revenue.”
Phone technology continued to advance well into the 1990s and early 2000s before cellular phones began replacing the need for hard-wired landline telephones. Advancements in connectivity improved reception, especially over long distances. Party lines were replaced with private lines as capacity from “curb to house” improved for virtually every building in the country. Switchboard operators would be replaced with newer, automated switchboards in the 1950s.
Enjoyed this article? Check out Early Telephones and Communication Around Warren County designed for kids and educators for a related read.
- “Telephone Install.” Warrenton Herald, 23 Apr. 1902, p. 4. Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/131675188/?match=1&terms=telephone+install.
- “Telephone Install.” Warrenton Banner, 14 June 1907, p. 1. Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/971534120/?match=1&terms=telephone+install.
- “Telephone Install.” Warrenton Banner, 10 June 1904, p. 1. Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/847097266/?match=1&terms=telephone+install.
- “Telephone Install.” The Marthasville Record, 17 Mar. 1911, p. 1. Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/849817467/?match=1&terms=telephone+install.
- “Telephone Install.” Warrenton Banner, 31 May 1912, p. 1. Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/848751169/?match=1.
- “Telephone Install.” The Marthasville Record, 28 Feb. 1913, p. 1. Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/849814045/?match=1&terms=telephone+install.
- “Telephone Install.” Warrenton Banner, 9 May 1924, p. 1. Newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/image/849896860/?match=1&terms=telephone+install.