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Number Please? This is the way your telephone would have been answered “in the good old days” when there were telephone operators. The only phone in town in 1888 was in Mrs. Brownlee’s grocery store and postoffice on the southeast corner of Depot and Bonita. The Sunset Telephone Co. was the first to run a line through San Dimas with “Magneto” service available. This required turning the crank to connect to the operator. In 1904 the Home Telephone Co. of Covina and the Pomona Telephone and Telegraph Union extended lines into San Dimas at the same time, but by 1909, the Pomona Company had taken over all the service in our town. In 1904 the Pomona Exchange had only 12 subscribers here, 6 homes, and 6 businesses. Our local historian, Mrs. Harry Walker, left us the record of her husband’s effort to get a telephone exchange in San Dimas. Mr. and Mrs. Walker moved into their new home on South Walnut in 1908, and it was one mile from town. The Pomona company said that all their lines were full, and Harry Walker was desperate to get a phone. Mr. Walker asked them if there was any way he could get a telephone in his home. After some thought, they told him that if he could get every subscriber to pay 25 cents more and if he could sign up 12 or 15 new subscribers, they would put an exchange in San Dimas and the Walkers could have a phone in their home in the south hills. Harry Walker got the Board of Trade to appoint him solicitor, and he started out with his horse and buggy to make the rounds. Sometimes he had to make several calls at each place to find the owner home. So, he went back to the phone company to ask if they could possibly give him a phone so he could call and make appointments. |
They couldn’t give him a regular phone, but did install one on which he could make outgoing calls, but could not receive any incoming ones. In a very short time, he had every subscriber but one signed up for the extra 25 cents, and had 20 new subscribers. So an exchange was opened in San Dimas in 1909 with 112 customers. The exchange was first in the same small building which had housed the Bank while its brick building was being built. Then in 1912 the concrete block telephone building was built on Exchange Place just north of the Bank. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Laing were the first operators. When Marilyn Vaniman’s mother, Mildred Hoke McDonald, was the phone operator during and just after World War 1, Charles Laing slept on a cot in the Exchange and did the “Number, please” duty at night.
During 1922-23, the exchange was converted to “modern machine-switching” equipment — but — instead of “requiring” subscribers to dial their own telephones, a trained operator was employed because they felt that she would set up the connection “more rapidly and accurately.” Her keyboard was similar to an adding machine. There is no record as to whether any of these were “party lines,” but by 1929, San Dimas had 492 subscribers. |
