wooden structures in Dodge City, it had a population of thirty-five thousand in 1879 and was the first city in the west to have telephone service. I remember this fact very well because one of my first assignments was to write an article about the Denver Telephone Dispatch Company, which had opened for business just a few months before. The one fact I recall about that story was that the Denver telephone exchange was the seventeenth in the nation, opening just nine days after the Minneapolis exchange.

I was sure I was living in the most progressive city in the United States, and I remember writing my mother a letter to that effect. She answered with a letter pointing out that Kansas City also had telephone service and wondered if I had thought about moving there so I would be closer to her. Lawrence, sh...

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