The Mojave Phone Booth
— A Legend in Our Time
The Mojave desert holds many legends. This one is different than most. At one point, Godfrey Daniels heard about a phone booth 15 miles from anywhere and made a point to track it down. That story is told in Adventures with the Mojave Phone Booth. It was an early internet sensation.
As legends go this one was comparatively tame. You did not have to drive down rocky roads across treacherous cliffs that could blow a tire at any given point. Nobody thought it hid secret entrances or that bodies were buried underneath. It was just a booth that offered shelter as you made or received phone calls.
At some point, the National Park Service decided the booth had to go. in some ways it was a strange thing to remove. A phone booth could be the difference between rescue and a disaster; between a long day and a very long day; or between calling home and getting into trouble. Yet, perhaps its internet success led to its demise. People were driving there to answer the phone and calling it too much.
Even after the booth was taken down, people went to look at cement slab. That, too, met its fate. All physical traces were removed.
It was as if they tried to obliviate our memories. But how do you remove the idea that a booth once stood there? In many ways the park met its ultimate foil in geocaching. ‘D’ Is For Desert Phone Booth preserves the story and expands it as a virtual shrine.
As Godfrey Daniel’s wrote, “As much as the NPS tried to stuff the Booth into their bag, people still go out to visit the place. Geocaching.com has featured the narratives of people who have done it. Apparently this still rankles government employees.”
Daniels notes that this is a virtual geocache with nothing physical to find. The Booth illustrates the importance of these caches. The virtual here not only preserves the memory of the Booth, it creates its own unique experience. It is not just that a booth used to be here, but it is about that this is the place where the Booth used to be. Without it, how many people would be coming here?
I still hold out a vague hope that a future administration will recognize its importance ans a cultural site and approve a historic marker. I don’t expect it, so any hope is vague. But let’s make it happen.
Buxley
This is no ordinary cache, but a Buxley one. If the history of caching is ever told, Buxley would warrant a chapter. He built a caching web site that offered mapping. In 2006, he and Geocaching HQ (Groundspeak) reached an impasse. He needed the data to have his maps but the management was protective. Rather than scrape the data like c:geo later did, he removed it from his site. Nevertheless, if you are interested in the rough and tumble history of the game, Buxley is one of the people who was there at the time. His site is worth exploring to get a better sense of the game’s history.
My Log
After visiting the Cow Cove petroglyphs, I pointed out to my noncaching wife that we were only a few miles from the site of a former phone booth. I admit that it was a little hard to explain. It was not even a phone booth, after all. It was only the site of one. You either get it or you don’t.
Of course the booth was gone before I learned about it, but why let such details dissuade us. I explained to my wife that the idea of a phone booth is as good as a real one — unless of course you need to make a phone call.
I am the type of person who would rather travel a few miles than to use a phone booth. I probably would not have called if it were still here. But I love poking around for oddities and the site of a former booth might be as odd as it gets.
I don’t think that the story particularly impressed my wife, but she is used to me and usually is generous when I want to do something. We made the turn and reached the cache location just before sunset. It was a natural spot for a phone booth. The ground was flat. There was enough space to wait your turn to make a call. It had a telephone pole next to it. What else would be here? Whoever took it away had no sense of either adventure or history.
My first thought was that the Clampers should install a plaque here. Apparently people have tried to get similar ideas approved by the Park Service, but they remain adamantly opposed to a quirky desert shrine. Some agencies lack artistic vision.
On the way back, the Mojave did not disappoint and the colors deepened as we passed through Joshua Trees. Apart from the petroglyphs I don’t think I would have come out here, but it is a place where dreams, former dreams, and reality intersect.
The idea of a virtual phone booth out here makes you wonder what else could be down the road. Anything people write about coming here is probably true. Anything people write about meeting the space people here is as likely as not. A site of a former phone booth, after all, is a type of portal. It will take you as far as you want to go.
11/03/2018
