The Beautiful Story of Mojave’s Phone Booth

Do you know the story of the phone booth of the mojave desert ? Placed in the middle of nowhere, it has become one of the most famous cabins in the world. It was installed in 1948 on the border between California and Nevada, near mines of slag. Located at the crossroads of two paths, about twenty kilometers from the nearest road, it allowed miners to contact the outside world.

The phone line was referenced as ” Cinder Peak 2 “. The cabin originally contained a phone crank, but this has been replaced by a phone by dial in the 1960s, then by a model with keys in the 1980s. The cabin fell more or less into oblivion, but continued to be indicated on the maps.

A curiosity that drew crowds

This indication, which seemed incongruous in the middle of nowhere, occasionally attracted curious people. In 1997, one of the visitors recounted his experience in a fanzine of a girl group, which caught the attention of one of the readers, Godfrey Daniels. He decided to call the cabin every day to see if it existed. Less than a month later, he got an answer when local mine operator Lorene Caffee came to the booth to make calls. Godfrey Daniels was so surprised that she really existed that he decided to go there two months later.

On his website, he describes the moment when he discovers the cabin. ” It was exactly as I had imagined it: an isolated communications post at the end of a long, very long chain of telephone poles. All his windows had been destroyed, but I found it beautiful. At that time, I felt like never leaving. From there, the cabin grew in popularity and garnered media attention. People started calling the booth or flocking to the spot. Some have even held events there, such as a man who camped there for a month to read Bible verses to callers.

A cabin that marked popular culture

The cabin being located in the Mojave National Preservethe managers began to see a bad eye this frequentation which degraded the site. When they came across a fire camp left unattended, they contacted operator Pacific Bell to ask them to remove the cabin. On May 17, 2000, “the most isolated cabin on Earth” no longer existed. The craze around the cabin continued for a while, and some erected a tombstone on its location, but this too was removed.

The phone booth mojave desert left its mark on popular culture. In 2006, the movie Mojave Phone Booth follows four characters, whose stories are all connected by the cabin. She is also the subject of the short film dead line and documentary Mojave Mirage. She also served as inspiration for part of the book. The Overton Window by Glenn Beck. This year again, in CanadaGuillaume Saindon has set up an artistic work called Cabin/Traces. Audiences enter a phone booth one at a time and can hear stories of people who have visited the Mojaves booth.

Today the booth phone number (760-733-9969) was retrieved and hooked up to a conference system by voice over IP in order to allow curious people who call the number to continue to connect with each other.