Telecommunications in Colorado
1906–1928

Littleton Central Office
Mountain States construction crew in Alma, Colorado, 1902. On horses, left to right: Joseph O'Laughlin, M.M. Steck, Billy MacCandless, Jim Byrne. Front row, Left to right: "Yorky" Cameron, Bill Schulty.
Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Company was formed in 1911 to serve customers in a seven-state region
In the early 1900s, crews dug holes and raised poles by hand with help from horses, levers, and spikes.
Colorado long distance service in 1910
What was different from today?
  • You could call only a few nearby people.
  • Because only a few people could afford telephones, you couldn't call everyone.
  • Most phones were in businesses.
  • If your home had phone service, your family shared a single phone set. It was fastened to a wire in your house, so you couldn't carry it with you.
  • If no one answered, you tried later because no one had an answering machine or voice mail.
  • You sent slow, expensive telegraph messages to people far away.
  • Computers, television, and the internet hadn't been invented.
Long-distance calls costly in 1900
In 1900 a 5-minute call from Denver to Leadville cost $1. In 2011 dollars, the cost would have been $26.40.

Year Local Phone
Systems 		Subscribers Employees
1879 2 319 37
1900 59 10,381 546
1910 151 80,967 2,118
Why do we say "Hello" when we answer a ringing phone?

Online Exhibits
Telecommunications in Colorado


Allen Tupper True Mural, The Wings of Thought (THG file photo)

Throughout history, human beings have had an innate desire to communicate. This exhibit features a timeline from face-to-face communications of the mid-19th century to today’s instant, global communications, and invites the viewer to imagine what it must have been like to wait weeks or months for news from back home.

Using Allen True’s Wings of Thought mural as a motif, the exhibit highlights documents, directories, and photographs from Telecommunications History Group archives. This online exhibit is based on a 2011 THG exhibit at the Denver Public Library.

Note: Because the exhibit is based on a physical original, it doesn't currently work on a mobile phone in portrait mode (and will look very small in landscape as well). Please view on a tablet or larger device. We're working to get a version of this exhibit to be mobile-friendly.