Explore Death Valley's Rich History

Telephone history

While the area has modern telephone service today, the park is a rural area.
Before the 1980s, a variety of telephone technologies of different eras connected communities within the park. The area was within the Pacific Telephone area of the former Bell System. An electromechanical step-by-step central office at Furnace Creek switched calls for dial telephones in the resort and Visitor Center area. At the time, service was constrained to rotary dial only. Coin service was provided and included dialtone-first 9-1-1 service when that rolled out.

A 454 MHz (Furnace Creek to Stovepipe Wells) / 459 MHz (reverse direction) full-duplex Rural Radio Telephone Service link went from Furnace Creek Central Office to Stovepipe Wells. The channel pairs were shared with Improved Mobile Telephone Service, which was not offered on UHF in Death Valley. The link used single-frequency (SF) signaling. Subscribers at Stovepipe Wells used non-dial phones, (manual service). To place a call, they would just go off-hook and wait for the operator. To reach Stovepipe Wells from anyplace in North America, callers would dial "0" for the operator and ask for Stovepipe Wells California Toll Station Number... (and the single-digit number). Although Death Valley was in 619 area code at the time, the operator routing for Stovepipe Wells was through Los Angeles: KP 213+181 ST. The caller's local toll operator would have to call an operator in Los Angeles, who would manually set up the call.

Death Valley Junction was also on manual service. A multi-circuit open wire ran from Furnace Creek Central Office to Death Valley Junction. An unusual, non-dial 1A1 Coin Collector was installed at the Amargosa Hotel. Its bright red instruction card said, "Do Not Deposit Coins," as there was no way to send coin relay commands (e.g. coin return/coin collect) over the manual circuit.

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