Wyoming pioneer Nellie Gattliff Sargent had a great fear of electrical storms, and her family witnessed first-hand the dangers of having a telephone during one of these storms.
Sargent had arrived in the Arvada Territory in Wyoming in 1922 with her husband and three young children.
As storm clouds gathered in the wide-open skies, she would keep her eye out for cyclones, hail and lightning. Her daughter, Ruth Sargent Nelson, recalled how her mom would hurry the children inside the house during these storms.
“My mother always made us three children keep away from the screens and open doors, but especially the telephone,” Nelson said in a 1984 interview for the Arvada Historical Society.
The first phone lines on these rural ranches were run along barbed wire fences, and in later years, insulators were fastened to fenceposts tops. Sargent’s fears proved warranted when lightning struck the family’s fence line.
They did not have insulators at the time, and the result could have been deadly.
“A round bolt of electricity came out of the mouthpiece of the telephone and rolled all around the living room before going out through the screen,” Nelson said. “So, I guess Mother had reason for a legitimate fear.”
Another time, Ruth recalled how she and her father were outside in an electrical storm, shooing the chickens into their coop to get them out of the rain.
“Lightning hit the phone wire that connected the fence to our house,” Ruth said. “The wire was cut in two and one piece hit my dad and me on our heads and really knocked us flat. About scared us all to death and the top of our heads were sore for several days.”
In rural Wyoming, it was rare to find a phone hanging in a private residence, and if there was one, it was usually connected to a private line that the rancher and/or community had rigged up along their fence lines. These lines only went as far as the next ranch over but connected isolated families with each other. 
Original wooden phones in Wyoming were connected to wires from the top of the phone and strung outside to fences. Before insulators were installed, there was the danger of lightning strikes running through the wires and coming out of the mouthpieces. (Jackie Dorothy, Cowboy State Daily)
Rural Phone Service
Although telephone service was established as early as 1881 in Cheyenne, many rural homes in Wyoming did not have service for another 70 years. It wasn’t until the 1950s that commercial telephone carriers came into many communities.
Before modern times came to these isolated ranches, in order to place calls, most residents would have to make a long trip into town, usually by horseback or foot.
Enterprising ranchers, like the Sargents, didn’t wait for companies to come in and built their own telephone lines, although their service would only run a few miles away to the next ranch over.
The Sargents’ phone, which had survived the lightning strike, was modern for its time. Nelson described it as a beautiful hardwood box, with a crank on the side to call and a black receiver to hold to your ear.
“Our telephone line was only the barbed wire fences skirting the ranches, so much of the time, when the cows broke a fence line, it was “out of order” until someone fixed the break in the line,” Nelson said.
The reason for installing the phone was so that the family could call Nelson’s grandparents, who lived on a farm down the road three miles away. Her grandfather was ill with cancer, and they needed to be in contact in case he took a turn for the worse.
“It was very limited as to communication but how thrilling to be able to talk to them during the long cold winters,” Nelson said.
Dedication To Phone Service
Elsewhere in Sheridan County, other ranchers had also installed their own private lines. Two lines had been built as a community effort by the ranchers along Badger Creek known as the 77 and 79 telephone lines.
These lines were first installed in the early spring of 1907.
Rancher Manville Kendrick said that George Brewster, another local rancher, had cut cedar posts on his ranch and hauled them all along Badger Creek to help establish the phone service, but not without difficulty.
The ground was covered with ice and snow when a wagon pulled in at dusk to the O-A Ranch. John Turner and Horatio Burns were surprised to see Brewster limping into the barn and hurried to help him unhook the team.
When they asked him what was wrong, he told them how he had gotten off the wagon because the horses were having a tough time pulling the heavily loaded wagon through a cut and up a hill on Wall Creek.
“The horses weren’t shod and the ground was frozen and covered with ice,” Kendrick said. “Somehow Brewster slipped and fell, the wagon ran over his legs.”
Brewster’s wagon was loaded with cedar posts for the phone line, and despite his injury, Brewster was determined to deliver the posts and get phone service installed in his community. He delivered that load and went back for more, still limping badly.
Due to his efforts and those of others, the poles were installed and the lines strung up. The “77 line” went from Sheridan down Tongue River to the Birney area. The “79 line” was strung from Lower Prairie Dog, across Badger Creek to ranches all along the Powder River.
Nellie Sargent feared the power of electrical storms. Her fear proved correct when lightning struck the fence and traveled down the phone line the family had installed on the barb wire and came out the mouth piece of the family phone. (Arvada Historical Society) 
The Sargent family had installed their own private phone line on the barbed wire fences by their home. This line only extended to Forrest Sargent’s parents house but connected the two families, especially in the case of an emergency. (Arvada Historical Society) 
The Sargent family, Bonita, Nellie, Ruth, Forrest and Burton, were one of the rare families in rural Wyoming that had telephone service in the 1920s. Forrest had installed the line on his barbed wire fence for three miles down the road to his parent’s house. For years, they only were able to call his parents until the line was extended. (Arvada Historical Society)
Phone Service On Wild Horse Creek
Doris Floyd, another early resident in rural Sheridan County, told the Arvada Historical Society that the telephone line on Wild Horse Creek was built in 1911 by Ed Fitch, Sr. This line ran on barbed wire fences for fifteen miles east to his son’s ranch on 20 Mile Creek. His son, Chuck, extended the line by 1913 to include other residents.
“Barbed wire as telephone line did not work as well as smooth wire since there were too many fence corners,” Floyd said. “Rock, wire and wood ‘deadmen’ all caused interference and outages.”
As soon as possible, the barbed wire was replaced with smooth wire and attached to eight-foot cedar poles. Insulators were affixed to the tops of the poles and the poles fastened to fenceposts.
“Each household had a different ring, such as two long rings, two short rings or any combination thereof,” Floyd said. “If there was no answer to the first ring you kept ringing until your arm wore out or your party answered.”
There were an estimated eight phones in use at one time on this one phone line originally built by Fitch and maintained by the men of the community. With so many using one phone, it was sometimes hard to get through.
“Chuck Fitch installed a cut-off to his line,” Floyd said. “Whenever he needed to make a call or thought someone had talked long enough, he just cut ’em off.”
These early phones enabled isolated ranchers to visit, conduct business and plan the day’s work, Floyd said.
Commercial Lines Replaced Private
By the mid-1940s, businesses in Arvada had installed telephones, though the service was still maintained privately. Collins Brothers Garage, Bell’s Bar, and the McDermott Store all offered the service, and eventually a pay phone booth was even put in.
The advantage of the pay phone, according to the Arvada Historical Society, was that residents could get in the booth and make a business call without everyone hearing what business they were trying to conduct.
Finally, in the early 50s, the neighbors on Wild Horse Creek got together to try to work something out with Mountain Bell Telephone to get telephone service, either from Gillette or Arvada. However, nothing ever materialized.
About this time, a very small co-op was started at Ashland, Montana, which was building lines to isolated areas. George Clabaugh, one of the men who maintained the Wild Horse Creek phone service, worked for many long months with the co-op to bring the service to his community.
The result was that the Range Telephone Co-op came in and installed party lines with nine people on each line by 1951. Over the years, the co-op continued to improve service into these rural areas, and residents marveled when, by the 1980s, everyone had their own private line.
Commercial telephone service was now available for all residents and replaced the lines that rural residents had maintained for over half a century.
“Today each home has one or more phones, dial or push button type, made of plastic,” Floyd said in 1984. “Times have changed. How did we ever get along without the telephone?”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
