Have been doing some local investigation of a particular insulator and thought it valuable enough to share with the rest of the world. I kinda put two and two together to end up with a relatively true to fact story.

Denver was the third in the nation to have a central office; meaning, of course, that all the wires went to the office, and you were connected to another pair of wires, by the operator, to the desired number you wished. Previous to this you had to physically string a pair of wires between your phone and that of the doctor, grocer, or whoever you wanted service to.

On Monday, February 4, 1879, the Denver central office opened its doors for business for the first time. Earlier, the Transcontinental Telegraph line strung a branch to Denver through Julesburg on October 10, 1863, so we already had outside telegraph. The central office was located at this time between 15th and 16th streets on Larimer (downtown Denver).

Then the need was growing greatly for the major cities to get the telephone service also. Central City's boom was still going. Georgetown was a prosperous town, along with Golden and Idaho Springs; so they engineered the first long-distance line in Colorado between all of these towns, since they were geographically in a relatively straight line.

The line, obviously, was at least being planned, if not already started to be built, at the same time the central office was completed, because the line was finished in March of 1879. It was built first to Golden, heading straight west out of Denver, up Clear Creek to Central City, then through Russel Gulch and turning south over to Idaho Springs. When the line got to Idaho Springs it went west again to Empire, then on over to Georgetown.

The 1871 #4 in its crudest style (out of the four styles) is beyond a doubt the insulator they used.

This past summer bottle diggers (myself one) unearthed several pieces of these about three blocks from the early location of the central office. None of these were perfect, only one being whole. The dig was held with the clearing of a very early Denver dump along Cherry Creek, and was believed a dump to fortify the creek's banks.

There was a line torn down by Golden by an old lineman (now 83) who distinctly remembered the piece and was able to pick it out of a group of different ponys. A line between Georgetown and Idaho Springs had been taken over by the local power company and re-used as a talk circuit for the trouble shooters servicing the area. This insulator was taken off of this line only five years ago. Just last spring a bunch of re-used insulators, from an old line in the area, was located between Russel Gulch and Idaho Springs, and an old #4 was pulled down by a jubilant lineman who knew what he had found.

The insulator is a historical one for Colorado, as we found that it made history in the early advancements. The insulator, to my knowledge, has never been found on any other lines in Colorado. At any rate I know that it is by far the earliest of the four #4 styles made, and most assuredly the rarest. To date I know of only about ten recovered from this area; and I'd really like to hear if there are other locations where these have been uncovered. There is only one in the light S.C.A., and I would like to find out about its origin (I'd love to own it, too!).

Hope that I have shown some light on this weird CD 124. As of about three or four years ago, Mr. Milholland had never been able to see one, and I'm eager to see if it snuck into his 4th Revision.