Mojave Desert Phone Booth

1 You are driving alone down a lonely highway. There is nothing around but miles and miles of desert. Out of nowhere, you see a telephone booth. Curiously, you drive up to investigate and realize that the phone inside this telephone booth that is miles away from the nearest town is ringing! You pick up the phone to answer, and the voice on the other line asks, “Is this the Mojave Desert phone booth?” For years, the Mojave Desert phone booth was a huge attraction for tourists and fans due to its remote location, and phone calls such as this one were often made by curious fanatics of the booth.

2 Located in the middle of the Mojave Desert in California, the Mojave phone booth was first built in the 1960’s to provide phone service for local miners and remote residents in the area. It was one of the phone booths built as a result of a California law at the time which demanded that phone service stations be provided in remote areas to help those living in the areas. The original phone had a rotary dial, but in the 1970’s it was replaced with a phone that had a touch-tone dial pad. 3 The phone booth did not gain its popularity until the rise of the internet in 1997. A Los Angeles man drove through the area and spotted the phone booth. He thought it was interesting and wrote about his experience to a newspaper. He included the telephone number to the phone booth in his writing which was later read by Godfrey Daniels, an internet enthusiast.