The Evolution of the Comstock’s Telephone System

Silver City, Nevada - Sometimes I forget how rapidly communication has changed, especially phone communication. Using the Comstock as an example, in 1975 the Silver City/ Gold Hill/Virginia City region changed from a magneto switchboard system in which operators were needed to connect calls, to a system where households had their own phone number and rotary dial phones. My husband recalls that his family’s crank telephone became obsolete. The old “party-line” system, which included the possibility that others were listening in on calls, disappeared.

In 1975, the Storey County Bi-Centennial Committee, inspired by an idea from Virgil Bucchianeri, published a “Comstock Commemorative Directory.” The directory began with a tribute to operators, including Susie Davis, who “faithfully performed her duties as a telephone operator for almost a half century...Her father was the first manager of the local telephone exchange.”

Creators of the Commemorative Directory lamented the fact that “it will no longer be possible to locate the whereabouts of other subscribers or misplaced persons by contacting the Operator...The new system will be considerably more time-consuming on your part, and will require patience. Let us hope that this is the last concession we must make to ‘progress’ and the 20th Century!”

According to the Directory, the first telephone exchange in Nevada opened in Virginia City in 1882, operating from the back of the J.M. Davis Book and Stationery Store. The Virginia City exchange eventually came to be owned by Nevada Bell, which built a new C Street office with a switchboard in 1959. A new and larger magneto switchboard was installed in the C Street office in 1963. Finally, on June 14, 1975, rotary dial phones went into effect for Silver City, Gold Hill and Virginia City.

Although changing to a rotary phone system was only the beginning of “concessions made to progress,” today the landline number my husband grew up with in Silver City is the very same number our family uses today. We were tickled to find it listed in the Comstock Commemorative Directory of only about 350 telephone numbers listed in 1975.

The cover of the 1975 Comstock Commemorative Directory, shown here, features an illustration by Jack Curran of the Comstock's magneto telephone switchboard circa 1940. Artwork for the Directory was commissioned by the Storey County Bi-Centennial Committee.