Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company

One of the pioneer business institutions of the West, and one that has created a big industry in the inter-mountain country, is the Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Company, which maintains comprehensive local and long-distance telephone service throughout Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

The company's history is interesting. It was started as a small local concern in Utah only a few years after the telephone had been developed to the point where it gave promise of becoming a commercial utility, and has grown steadily until now its lines reach to all parts of the four States that constitute its territory and connect with other lines extending through other States.

It has achieved remarkable success in an unusually difficult territory, where it has covered more area in proportion to population than any other telephone company in the country. Its territory embraces almost every condition of topography and climate to be found in the United States and it has met and solved successfully many problems that it had to meet without the benefit of a precedent in the telephone business anywhere.

It has been a conspicuous factor in the development of its field, commercially and socially, by providing the right sort of quick communication between all portions of its territory. It is now operating eight thousand miles of long-distance pole lines, connecting 1200 different points in the four States, thus furnishing the universal telephone service that alone is adequate to meet the needs of a busy and growing-region. The thoroughness with which it has developed its territory in the face of so many adverse physical conditions is regarded as marvelous by the leading telephone men of the country.

It has been quick to take advantage of every improvement of merit developed in the business, and is engaged continuously in extending its system to meet the growth of the territory and in improving existing plants in order to cover the field properly and to be able to give the right sort of service at all times.

The company was formed by Western men under the laws of Utah, and it remains a Utah corporation to this day. Its stock is still held largely by persons living in its own territory, thus making it essentially a "home" institution, while at the same time it has, through its affiliation with the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, the advantage of connections with other Bell telephone companies and the benefit of the advice and services of the best minds in the telephone field. Its financial organization is sound and conservative and its rates have always been so adjusted as to earn only a fair return on the money invested in the plant.

The general offices of the company are at Salt Lake City, where the company owns one of the finest fire-proof buildings in the West, built especially with a view to providing ideal facilities for the conduct of the telephone business. The company also owns and occupies its own buildings at twenty-five other cities in the four States.

Newspapers

Railroad Stations

Index

Source: Sketches of the Inter-Mountain States, Utah, Idaho and Nevada, Published by The Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1909