47 Years Ago (and 147 Years Ago)
The August 31, 1979 Golden Transcript celebrated 100 years of telephone service in Golden. The article recalled how two telephone companies–Bell and Edison–raced to install telephone lines between Denver and Golden.
Bell Telephone began the work in Denver at 8:30AM on September 1, 1879 and reached Golden at 7PM. By 7:30 that evening, they had placed their first call to Denver. Colorado Edison completed their wiring and placed their first call ten minutes later.
The neck-and-neck competition was exciting, but short-lived. By December of 1879, Edison’s telephone company had retreated from Golden, leaving us with Bell Telephone as our sole provider.
Sources: September 3, 1879 Colorado Transcript and September 2, 1954 Colorado Transcript
Thirty-five subscribers signed up for Golden’s new service at a cost of $60/year for businesses and $48/year for residences. The town quickly grew to appreciate it. Less than a month after the phones were installed, the Transcript wrote these words of praise:
The Golden Telephone Dispatch Co. is now one of the solid institutions of our city, and one that we could hardly get along without, even after our short experience of its usefulness.
The article concluded with comments on the impressive growth of the service. From the initial 35 subscribers, Golden’s central office had grown to 4,721 lines on the 278 exchange and 6,869 with 279 numbers.
There have been seismic changes to the telephone industry in the years since that article was written. Mountain Bell became US West, which gave way to Qwest, which became CenturyLink–the current provider of landlines in the Golden area.
On August 6th, 2026, the Denver Post reported that Century Link was phasing out landlines. The article added that only 1.3% of Colorado adults lived in landline-only households.
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