Barbed Wire Telephone Lines Brought Homesteaders Together

Post Reply New Topic

"Left to telephone companies and their bottom lines, farm people would not have had telecommunications at all. Building lines was expensive, and hardly worth the effort in sparsely populated areas. But, according to historian Ronald R. Kline, manufacturers underestimated the entrepreneurial, innovative spirit of these men and women. “Ranchers and farm men built many of the early systems as private lines to hook up the neighbors,” writes Kline, “often using the ubiquitous barbed-wire fences that divided much of the land west of the Mississippi.”

inc.com - How the West Was Wired
A look at how Great Plains farmers used barbed-wire fences to transmit telephone calls.
By David B. Sicilia

One such system operated in the isolated northeastern corner of Montana in the mid-1920s. Its developer was a farmer with "some electrical training," who was called upon by neighbors to fashion a barbed-wire phone system. "There are miles and miles of pasture fences . . . and in many localities these corner each other at section junctions," reported the farmer, who identified himself only as H.B.S. in the region's farm journal.

The trickiest part of such installations was joining wires, whether between properties or across gaps in a farmer's own fencing. Yet the system was supremely flexible. To bridge a gap between adjacent fences while allowing passage, one could employ several methods: bury insulated cable underground, or sink two tall poles into the earth and string them together with lead-covered insulated wire (the materials cost only $4), or even use barbed wire for the overhead crossing--as long as the splices were made with great care. ("Where the wires are looped, connect across a piece of wire and twist tightly on each side . . . and put more turns on than you think are necessary.") Soldering, however, worked best.

Insulation was another challenge. Porcelain knobs worked well as insulators on fence posts to prevent the wires from short-circuiting in the rain. For the delicate business of bringing the wires into the home, farmers often threaded them through porcelain tubes. These were single-wire grounded systems--as H.B.S. noted, "the earth serving as the other circuit wire"--rather then the more expensive two-wire systems. To ensure that the circuit was properly connected with the earth, phone customers typically connected the end of the circuit to a six-foot galvanized pole that had been hammered into the ground. The farsighted H.B.S. even installed knife switches at regular intervals for circuit troubleshooting. These gave him the ability to shut down segments of the network to isolate faults on the line and thus locate them more quickly.
Though most of the nation prospered during the Roaring Twenties, American farmers suffered from a severe agricultural depression. ("Hard times like these force us to economize to the last cent," reported the Montana system builder.) The eight members of the Montana East Line Telephone Association, therefore, were pleased that H.B.S. was able to get them connected for about $25 each. The package included a telephone set with two dry batteries and a "sure ring condenser," a magneto, a lightning arrester, the ground rod, knobs, and tubes, plus 10 feet of interior wire and more than 50 feet of outside "drop wire" to connect with the nearest pole. "Beyond that," explained H.B.S., "you may use any kind of wire you have."