The phone booth was originally set up in 1948 at the request of the owner of a local mining company, Emerson Ray, to serve his workers and others who lived in the area at the time as well as to comply with an initiative by the Californian government to deliver communications to isolated communities.
The original phone was a hand-cranked telephone magneto which was replaced with a rotary payphone in the 1960s, which was again later replaced with a touch-tone phone in the 1970s.
The Mojave Phone Booth first came to prominence in 1997 when the surreality of its existence turned it into an early Internet sensation, with several websites becoming devoted to the phone. Fans of the phone would ring it as well as trekking out to answer such calls. Many recordings of such calls have been made. In 1999 the Los Angeles Times writer John Glionna reported that one his own pilgrimage to the phone booth he had met a man who claimed he was called their by the Holy Spirit to answer calls. The man had camped out their for over a month and had answered more than 500 phone calls.
The new-found fame of the Mojave Phone Booth and it becoming a tourist attraction eventually lead to its demise. In the May of 2000 it was removed by the National Park Service due to the environmental impact pilgrims were making to the local area. With its removal, the phone number was also retired. A victim of its own notoriety.
Fortunately, in 2013, the phone number of the Mojave Phone Booth was purchased by the radio personality and telecommunications expert Jered Morgan, with the intention of once again allowing strangers to communicate with each other via the number.
The phone number is (760) 733-9969.
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