A Lifeline on the Empty Road
Facing a fourteen-mile stretch of road with no human habitation, Benton County installs a telephone booth to aid motorists stranded between Hanford and the Yakima River.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In order that the public traveling to and from this valley over the road between Hanford and the horn of the Yakima river may have some of the inconveniences of an accident lessened, the county has installed a telephone booth seven miles below Hanford. It is 14 miles from Hanford to the horn and after leaving the ditch about a mile below Hanford there is nothing in the way of a human habitation until the Yakima river is reached. There is quite a bit of automobile travel on this road now and a fellow is sure out of luck if the old car goes bad. The installation of the telephone booth just half way between the two places fixes it so that any traveler in case of an accident will not have to walk over three and one half miles to telephone for help. The fee for each call is 25 cents and is collected from the party called, and County Commissioner Bash, who was responsible for the establishment of the service, believes that the $1.50 per month charge that the county pays the telephone company for service will be more than covered.
“There is quite a bit of automobile travel on this road now and a fellow is sure out of luck if the old car goes bad.”
This roadside phone booth served as a primitive emergency network for the early days of regional automobile travel. Today, the stretch of road described is part of the Hanford Reach area, largely closed to the public and vastly changed from the era when a stalled car necessitated a long walk to a lonely booth.
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