“Vi? …‘You listenin’ again? Mary, is that you? I hear you breathin’ …Click.”

We had no electricity… that would come sometime later. However in the old house, framed entirely of redwood, there was a party-line phone on the living room wall. The phone was the old wooden box, crank type. Cranking that box made it ring everybody else’s phone, all the way up and down the entire line. Our ring was two longs and two shorts. Everyone knew each other’s ring. One long and one short, two shorts and one long, three shorts and so on. Just like up town. That’s how everybody stayed in contact out on Campo Road, in remote eastern San Diego County during the first half of the last century.

The primitive phone system served the communities pretty well, especially in personal emergencies. But then, everyone hearing each other’s ring number always alerted the neighbors as to who was receiving a call. Human nature being what it is, nosy neighbors just had to know what the neighbors were talking about, and why they were taking so long on the phone—who knows—maybe they were talking about you! Or maybe it was some juicy tidbit about an affair up the road, or, gossip from the schoolhouse or the post office.

Well, maybe it wasn’t quite the Harper Valley PTA, but during the 1940’s along that portion of Campo Rd (now Highway 94) from Honey Springs to Dulzura, on up to Barrett Junction and Potrero to Campo, there was some juicy gossip worth repeating at times. Mostly, what made it juicy is, it involved the social life at the Bamboo Inn and the Barrett Café and Dulzura Café with its tiny Dulzura Post Office right next door. It was said to be the smallest Post Office in the U.S. The Post Master handled all the general delivery mail and reviewed every return address. So, naturally that added a special bit of inside dope. After all, what’s a party line without being party to the latest line?  “Vi? … Is that you? Please get off the dang phone, so I can make a call…and don’t listen in! …Click.”

To us folks in Dulzura, those in Potrero and up at the Campo Store were a long ways away to the east, and they sorta had their own gossip community. The same was also true of those west of us, toward Honey Springs and Bratton Valley. Sometimes the gossip traveled clear up and down the whole line!

But, where’s Dulzura, you ask? To those who didn’t know, that same question was common even when I was growing up as a kid. So, some rebellious teenager eventually imprinted a T-shirt with the words on the front, “Where’ the Hell’s Dulzura?”  On the back it read, “Who gives a Damn!” That rude expression depicted the spirit of the teenage boys who had had enough of  Dulzura, and were looking west to the city girls. So, to answer the question for those who might “give a damn,” Dulzura is thirty miles east of San Diego, along highway 94 (Campo Road). The crooked and narrow, two-lane, road runs parallel to the Mexican border through the San Ysidro Mountains. This mountain range (formerly known as the Otay range) stretches from the Mexican border to Lyons peak and the old Jamul Ranch to the Dulzura Divide. Herein lies the enchanting hill and dale country of Dulzura, California. 

The earliest settlers of record are the Nepoleon Bratton family, in 1868.  Dulzura’s first postmaster was Mrs. Isadore Hagenbuck. It is said that her husband, Henry Hagenbuck is credited with establishing the name “Dulzura”.  The conjugation is taken from the Spanish word “dulce” meaning sweet or sweetness.  Apparently, in the descriptive context, it likens the area to the land of milk and honey. Thus, in addition to Dulzura, there exist “Honey Springs” on the other side of one of the mountains. The names fit well with the fact that in the early 1900’s raising bees for honey was a major source of income for the pioneers of Dulzura and other mountain communities.

But, about that party line… Actually, by 1943, when I was growing up, we were on the improved party-line phone system. However, it had its origin about forty years before my time. It surely was the era of the single-wire revolution! It is a testimony to the ingenuity of one person, a modern-day Alexander Graham Bell, and an interesting tidbit of San Diego regional history.

It seems that in the summer 1904, a young man by the name of Howard Eaton had come home from college to the ranch at Honey Springs.  He was a student majoring in engineering. While his desire was to use his vacation time to leisurely explore the countryside around the ranch on his favorite roan horse, he was pressed in to the business of riding three miles to the Dulzura Post Office three times a week to get the mail. At the same time, he had also developed a liking for a charming young lady who desired more time with him and a social life.

Tired of playing pony express, he put his fertile engineering mind to work. He had no problem in conceiving a phone system that would eliminate the unnecessary trips to the post office, but he needed to solve the problem of spending time with his newfound love. Well, he managed to do both. He made her a working partner with his idea. He would order the parts and together they would build two battery-powered telephones, and install the system between the Honey Springs ranch and the Dulzura Post Office. For him, it was a double love affair!

Over a short period of time no one noticed that he and his sidekick were stringing a wire, through the brush and canyons, more than three miles to the Dulzura Post Office. He attached it to trees, high rocks and fence posts and it ended up on the wall of the Post Office. Not only had he built a working model of a telephone, he had succeeded in energizing the line by means of a dynamo when the crank was turned. This battery operated phone system was not just a success… it was a sensation! So, that first telephone line in the area was received with great enthusiasm by all the country folk. It was the talk of all the neighbors on that dirt wagon road, stretching from Honey Springs to Campo.

Now, everyone wanted the line extended and a phone of their own. However, from that early beginning, it would be fifty-two years before a commercial telephone company would offer service to the rural area of Dulzura. When it would finally come, it would be like kids talking through a water hose, it too would be just a party line.

As for Howard Eaton’s double love affair? It is said that that it wasn’t long before the other half told him, “it’s either me or that phone line!” He chose to give up his love affair with the phone line. History has it that they soon rode off toward the sunset on his favorite roan horse. 

During that time, Montgomery Ward began looking ahead to the likes of such a telephone bonanza across the country. So, they started selling telephones in their mail order catalogue. It wasn’t long before the extension of “Howard’s line” began reaching areas like Bratton Valley, Deerhorn Flats and Lyons Valley.  Ranch to ranch, including the Clark ranch, for which I worked as a teenager, each were eventually tied together on the bailing wire and barbed wire circuit. Eventually, the single wire system boasted twenty users!

In 1908 the Clark’s installed a second telephone at their ranch in Dulzura. This one was tied to the Chula Vista-Campo long distance telegraph line, promoted by the Campo Mercantile Company where there was a stage stop. For many years Mrs. Clark and her second phone line acted as a relay station for friends and neighbors on the Howard party line.

Also, in 1908 Dulzura had a full-scale gold rush and the mountain community was overrun with prospectors and drifters. For the first time the automobile showed up on the country wagon road. Even though very few cars existed in San Diego at that time, it is said that thirty came to remote Dulzura in just one day! Since no one was making any money, the gold rush ended in a rush. For this, the natives were glad. Tranquility returned to the land of sweetness.

Eight years later, in 1916, came the historic flood, believed by many locals to have been induced by Charles Hatfield. (See: “The Rainmaker & The 1916 Flood”)  All the mountain roads were washed out and demolished by the catastrophic flood, including Howard Eaton’s party line, so loved by the rural folks. But the folks were tough and resilient and immediately pulled together to restore their roads and bridges and their beloved party line. The rancher Elam Clark (for whom I worked as a teenager) patched the lines back together with bailing wire and barbed wire and soon he had the battery-powered system up and working again. Over the years the Howard- line suffered from brush fires as well, but it was always rebuilt.

On December 25^th, 1921 (Christmas day) the value of the Howard party line, as emergency communication, proved itself invaluable, even to those who saw it as one eccentric man’s hobby. Barrett Dam was in the process of being built. Only a partial dam had been erected and torrential rains were coming down. Unless something was done quickly to relieve the pressure on the weak structure, the pressure of the backing water could wipe out all that had been built, and even wash away the construction equipment. Birdena Smith, of the Smith ranch at Cottonwood, managed to get a phone message to the construction superintendent and his workers. Because of that one phone call the partially built dam was saved from certain destruction.

Before the dam was built, Cottonwood was the former name of Barrett, centered at Barrett Junction. When a post office was established near Barrett Junction, Birdena Smith became the Postmaster. (Political correctness like “Post Mistress, Madam, Matron, Mom, Person, etc.,” did not exist at that time.) She insisted on having Howard’s line put in the Post Office. She served as the Barrett Post Master for 18 years. Imagine 18 years of listening in, 18 years of gossip on the party line! “Birdie”… you listenin’ in again? Click.

Even though the Pacific Telegraph &Telephone Company had been in business since 1907, it wasn’t until March of 1956, fifty-two years after Howard Eaton made his first telephone and established the first “do-it-yourself” phone service, in and around Dulzura, that they offered public service to the Dulzura backcountry. It is said that four phones of the original “Howard line” were still in operation and their hand-cranked dynamos were still capable of ringing the phones of those remaining pioneers of Dulzura—folks at places like the Camps and the Clarks, who so loved their local party line. I remember seeing the original phone still hanging on the wall of the Clark’s ranch house, when I worked for them during the summers of 1947-51.

To this day, up and down Highway 94, there can still be seen a few iron pegs, about a foot high, sticking up on some boulders around Dulzura. If indeed they are even noticed, it is doubtful that any local folks know how these one hundred-year-old pegs got there, or what their purpose was. Travelers passing by would certainly not have a clue. These are the rusty remains of 1” iron pipe, drilled in to the top of certain granite boulders. They served as short posts to attach “Howard’s party line” wire. A glass insulator was attached to the top of each iron peg to secure the phone wire. Any insulators have long since disappeared. Only some rusty iron pegs remain to stain the rocks with reminders Dulzura history. Today, one can barely imagine a phone wire strung from boulder to boulder, tree-to-tree and post-to-post and any other suitable upright.

One of those boulders with an iron pipe-peg existed on our property, to which my brother I placed a whirly-gig that we had whittled from pieces of redwood boards. That little four-blade, windmill spun in the wind for years. Occasionally, we would take it down and grease the shaft of the propeller. The center of the propeller was fitted with a piece of carburetor tubing and a washer was placed at the front and backside, through which a heavy six-penny nail was inserted for a shaft. Thanks to “Howard’s line,” the peg served us boys well, but it served the Dulzura community for a much more noble and practical purpose for more than fifty years. 

Yes, “Recalling Callin”—the Dulzura party line— no one could have ever imagined how today, the once, sensational, single-wire revolution would be replaced by a phenomenal wireless revolution! Wireless? Why, that was the futuristic stuff that we read about in the Buck Roger’s comic books in the 1940’s! I remember once excitedly reading of communicating with others just by talking in to a wristwatch!

So it’s back to the future… a totally new era …but there is also this lingering sense of loss.  No more will you ever hear:  “Vi … ‘You listenin’ again?  Mary, is that you? I hear you breathin’ …Click.”

Ed Keenan © 12-08