Rocksprings Telephone Company
Rocksprings, Edwards County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(Southwest Texas Telephone Company) Local businessman Street Gilmer and D. H. Comparette of Kerrville built a long distance telephone line from Rocksprings to Kerrville in 1898. They installed the town's first telephone in Newton & Smart's store. The phone was later moved to Gilmer's Drug Store; this marked the beginning of the Rocksprings Telephone Company. Telephone customers in the early 20th century used crank-handled magneto wall phones to contact telephone operators. As many as seventeen parties shared each phone line. A 1927 tornado impaired many of the Rocksprings lines and devastated the town. Telephone company employee Foster Owens left his home in the unstable weather to clear the toll lines by hand and call for assistance from Kerrville. Following the tornado, the telephone company built a new rock building. The 1950s brought major changes for the growing company. Street Gilmer died in February 1951 and his son Claud, a former state legislator and speaker of the House, became president of the company. In 1952 the Rocksprings exchange purchased the Nueces Canyon Telephone Company. Claud Gilmer's son became general manager in 1953. Over the next decade, the company acquired the Utopia, D'Hanis, and Vinegarroon telephone exchanges. By 1958 every exchange in the company had been converted to the dial system. The Rocksprings and Nueces Canyon Telephone Company became the Southwest Texas Telephone Company in 1983. It continues to be a family business: two of Street Gilmer's grandchildren and five great-grandchildren served on the board of directors one hundred years after the company's inception. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
The spread of the telephone into isolated ranch country shows how modern communication reached rural America, often carried by small family firms rather than national giants.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Street Gilmer
- · Claud Gilmer
Related events
- · 1927 Rocksprings tornado
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Dr. John R. Brinkley
Del Rio, TX
John R. Brinkley made a fortune peddling dubious cures — most infamously goat-gland surgery marketed to restore men's vigor — and pioneered the use of radio to reach a mass audience. Hounded by the American Medical Association and federal regulators, he relocated to Del Rio in 1933 and beamed his message across the country from a powerful 'border blaster' station just over the line in Mexico. Flamboyant and free-spending, he pumped money into the local economy during the Great Depression before authorities finally shut his operation down in 1938.
Kerrville Telephone Company
Kerrville, TX
In 1896, A. C. Schriner and D. H. Comparette sealed a deal with a handshake and $1,000 to start Kerrville's telephone exchange, first linking two wool warehouses before other businesses clamored to join. Within two years lines stretched to Rocksprings, Harper, Junction, and Medina, with remote ranches serving as toll stations well into the 1950s. Incorporated in 1907, the family-run company operated for more than a century.
R. L. White Ranch
Helotes, TX
Ryall Luther White managed the Uvalde Rock Asphalt Company before opening his own Alamo Paving Company in San Antonio in 1920, buying his own rock-asphalt mine and, by 1928, developing a new on-site cold-mix paving process marketed through the Great Depression. Beginning in 1926 he built one of the largest ranches in northwest Bexar County, its buildings — the two-story limestone Lake Pavilion, the Main House, and the Red Cottage — showcasing Texas rustic-style architecture on a grand scale. The ranch's 3,500 acres and historic buildings still reflect the tradition of grand Texas homesteads.
Charles A. Lindbergh in Texas
Camp Wood, TX
Before he was the most famous man in the world, Charles Lindbergh was a barnstormer called "Slim" who flew a surplus World War I biplane to Texas so he could say he'd flown there. In March 1924 he landed near Camp Wood and, attempting to take off the next day, harmlessly crashed into Warren Puett's store—an incident the townsfolk forgave and remembered fondly. Weeks later he entered Army flight training at San Antonio, and in 1927 made his history-making solo flight from New York to Paris.