Old Missoula

Telephone Industry Dates Back to Early Days in Garden City

One of Missoula’s larger industries, now operated by the Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co., dates back to the early days of the Garden City’s history.

Just 16 years after Hell Gate was founded, Alexander Graham Bell exhibited his telephone at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. That same year, in 1876, a Dr. Henke apparently had the first two phones in Missoula. He had the instruments connected between his home and a drugstore he owned.

It wasn’t until 1884 that the first telephone exchange was started here, with 22 phones and one employee, but this shut down in 1888. It was in 1891 that the phone exchange came here to stay.

Federal Line Bought

The Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Co., which started the system in 1884 and reopened it in 1891, started its long distance system by purchasing from the federal government a telegraph line of single iron wire  from Helena to Missoula via Deer Lodge and Drummond. A connecting line was constructed from Drummond to Philipsburg.

A toll line was completed from Missoula to Wallace, Idaho, in 1898, giving connections to Portland via Spokane. Long distance lines were completed between Missoula and Hamilton in 1906 and between here, Polson and Kalispell in 1910.

Rival Firm Starts

By 1911 the Missoula exchange had 1,814 phones and a rival company, the Montana Independent Telephone Co., went into business. The local residents had to subscribe to two systems for awhile if they wanted to be connected to all phones in the city. The independent company had a primitive dial system, but the firm lasted only a few years and the city went back to one exchange. During the two-company system newspaper advertisements asked readers to call “111 Black” or “222 Red,” as the two systems were identified, or simply “Independent” or “Bell”.

First for Missoula

Missoula scored a major first in the telephone business in Montana in 1927 when the first modern dial telephone system in the state was placed in operation. It was the second system to be used in the seven-state area of the company, which by that time had adopted its present name, Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co., part of the nationwide Bell System.

There were 3,900 phones here when the dial system was started. R. E. Coy was transferred to Missoula from Laurel when the changeover was made and he served the local area as manager the next 22 years, retiring in 1949.

By the time Coy retired there were 8,600 phones in Missoula, and the city doubled that number in the next 10 years, counting 17,200 phones by 1959. Going back to 1884 as the start of the first system here, that would mean it took 65 years for the first 8,600 and only 10 for the next 8,600.

D. H. Thomas has been manager of the Missoula operation since April 1949.

Another Big Change

Another big change in the Missoula operations went into effect Jan. 18, 1959, when the seven-digit system started here. This changed the telephone numbers many customers had had for many years, but there were a lot who merely had to add the prefix LI (Lincoln) to the number they had before.

This meant installation of thousands of new wires, the latest in automation to bring the plant here into the seven-digit class. Also in 1959 the company installed much new cable and completed a microwave radio relay system through Missoula between Helena and Spokane. One of the towers of the system, providing 600 communications channels, is on top of University Mountain just east of the city.

Installation of a 2,000-wire cable underground from Parkway Bridge along Orange street and Stephens avenue, branching out to several areas, one as far as South avenue, was the biggest single phase of the cable job.

Relay Into Service

The microwave radio relay system went into service in 1959. In radio relay transmission super high frequency radio waves carry telephone conversations, television programs or other signals from tower to tower as dependably as wires strung over the ground.

The Missoula office employs about 165 persons and the annual payroll is about $700,000. The company maintains a fleet of 32 trucks, most of the small, specially equipped variety used by installers and repairmen.

There are two heavy construction trucks and two aerial ladder trucks. The headquarters of the physical plant, 2101 Bow St., includes a large garage for the vehicles and stores of tens of thousands of items, from the smallest screw to reels of cable weighing six tons. The company keeps about 250 phones, a third of a year’s supply on hand.