John Yellott Rust
San Angelo, Tom Green County, Texas
Marker Inscription
President and general manager, for more than 50 years, of San Angelo Telephone Company (first office near this site). Born to a prominent family at Leesburg, Virginia, Rust was educated there and in Maryland. He went to work at 16 digging post holes for a telegraph company and at 17 became construction foreman on a telegraph line from New York City to Buffalo. At the age of 19 he moved to Hamilton, Texas, and spent 12 years there as a farmer and rancher. In 1892, joined by two younger brothers, he moved his outfit to West Texas. On a cattle-buying trip in 1898, he first saw San Angelo and recognized its potential for growth. Soon he bought the local hand-operated telephone business and began running toll lines to nearby towns. In the early days he and his brothers dug the holes, placed the poles, and strung the telephone wire. On occasion, they even handled the downtown switchboard. Under Rust's leadership the company extended 100 toll lines to 10 counties, serving 19 exchanges in this area. When he retired in 1948 it was the second largest Independent telephone firm in Texas. A civic leader, Rust served the city as alderman after it incorporated in 1904. He died in San Angelo on October 7, 1952. (1973)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
John Yellott Rust learned the wire trade young, digging post holes and building telegraph lines in the East before moving west and, in 1898, recognizing San Angelo's potential. He bought the town's hand-operated telephone business and, with his brothers, personally dug the holes, set the poles, and strung the lines that reached surrounding towns. Under his half-century of leadership the firm grew into the second-largest independent telephone company in Texas.
Why it matters
Rust's story captures how communications networks were built by hand across the rural West, knitting isolated towns into the modern connected world.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Yellott Rust
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Von Roeder Cotton Breeding Farms
Snyder, TX
Beginning in 1923, Clemens Von Roeder used naturally occurring mutations to breed a long-staple, big-boll cotton on this West Texas land, later adding strains resistant to hail, windstorm, and rust. Joined over the decades by his brother Nolan, agricultural executive Bentley Baize, and Nolan's son Max, the family developed marketed seed varieties — Texas Mammoth and Western Prolific for hand-picking, and Western Storm Proof for the new mechanical harvesters.
Rocksprings Telephone Company
Rocksprings, TX
In 1898 a local businessman and a Kerrville partner strung a long-distance line across the Hill Country to Rocksprings, installing the town's first telephone in a general store. From crank-handled magneto phones shared by as many as seventeen parties, the enterprise grew into a family-run company that survived the 1927 tornado and converted every exchange to dial service by 1958. A century on, descendants of the founder still sat on its board.
Schwartz & Raas and San Angelo National Bank Building
San Angelo, TX
These three Victorian commercial buildings went up during San Angelo's economic boom of the 1880s, among the first permanent structures in a town fast becoming the region's trading hub. The San Angelo National Bank refaced an existing building in 1884 with local sandstone and an ornate cornice, while grocers Louis Schwartz and Joseph Raas hired noted architect Oscar Ruffini to design a stone-and-iron storefront in 1885. Later homes to everything from rival grocers to the Roxy Theatre, they chart the commercial rise of West Texas.
The San Angelo Standard
San Angelo, TX
In 1884, two former employees of the San Angelo Enterprise, J. G. Murphy and W. A. Guthrie, bought a weekly paper and launched the Standard, printing its first four-page edition that May. Its early columns mixed frontier violence with the daily life of soldiers at nearby Fort Concho, a reminder that West Texas was still raw country. Within six months it doubled in size, and by 1905 it had grown into a daily paper that chronicled the rise of San Angelo.