Artifact of the Month: March 2016

Telephone book

Ketchikan Museums maintains a collection of telephone books from 1910 to the present to help patrons with research questions. Such ordinary, everyday things as a phonebook, when published annually for over one hundred years can be a valuable tool for historical and genealogical research. With each passing year content grew as the town expanded and telephones became more commonplace. Phonebooks can be used to help confirm addresses and establish rough timelines and locations for businesses and people living here.

Here are a few tips for deriving dating clues from old Ketchikan phone numbers. Up until the early 1950s, telephone numbers were listed by naming the exchange and the two or three digits for each connection. For example, when the Gilmore Hotel opened in 1927 its telephone number was listed as 470. In 1954, telephone numbers became four digits. That year, the Gilmore Hotel's number was 2174. The change was short-lived and in 1959, a new seven digit number system was introduced including a prefix that was frequently dropped when dialing a number. The Gilmore Hotel's number converted to CA5-2174. By 1968, following national trends, Ketchikan Public Utilities eliminated the exchange prefix and developed the standard seven digit numbering system that we still use today.

For more information on Ketchikan Museums' phone book collection, please click on the "Research Request Form" link below or call us at 907-225-5600.

Ketchikan Museums: Tongass Historical Society Collection, THS 68.12.4.3