Calaveras Telephone

One of the last family-founded and still family-operated phone companies in America stood here. Jim Tower founded it after stringing his first telephone wires in 1895, tacked along posts of barb wire fences, which earned him the nickname “Barbed Wire Jim.” In 1900, he was franchised with Alexander Graham Bell to do business with the Bell system. Born in nearby Salt Springs Valley in 1879 and midwifed by Madame Felix, Jim married one of his operators, Laura Hazelquist, in 1909. After Jim died in 1936, his wife ran the company until their only child, Howard, succeeded her. The company later came under the management of Jim’s grandson, also named Jim, though not known as “Barb Wire.”

Copperopolis, California · United States