When major U.S. cities were connected to telephone service in the late 1800s, small towns like those in Southern Oregon were left on the sidelines. Most of them did not have power plants or sewer lines, let alone the money to build a phone network and pay royalties to Alexander Graham Bell.
Furthermore, the telephone was still a novelty. While telephones made sense for business or calling distant relatives, individuals generally saw no need to phone neighbors across town. As a Jacksonville, Ore., reporter wrote, “…there seems a kind of absurdity in addressing a piece of iron.”
On the other hand, small-town entrepreneurs saw the need for local telephone service. They began building primitive acoustic systems by stringing lines between a few houses and attaching them to vibrating diaphragms. Acoustic telephones weren’t bound by Bell’s patents.
Jacksonville’s earliest acoustic system was constructed in 1879 by dentist Will Jackson, who connected his house to that of Judge Legrand Duncan and newspaper editor William Turner. It was a far cry from the universal service in the Rogue Valley that came 20 years later with the first telephone switchboard and operator located in a Medford drugstore.
Works cited: Miller, Bill. "Southern Oregon "Hellos" the World." Southern Oregon Heritage Today, vol. 4, no. 11, Nov. 2002, pp. 8-13
