Phone Exchange Name Query

May 19, 2020 3:24 PM

I'm trying to find the phone exchange name for Taylorsville-Bennion (Utah) in the '50s/'60s? I've tried the Library of Congress to no avail. And the Taylorsville Historical Society search was just as fruitless. Any ideas?
posted by longhaultrucker to Grab Bag (9 answers total)

According to this newspaper from that region in 1960, it looks like it was AM6. Are you looking for the words people used for AM? The recommended one was AMherst, I can poke around some more and see if I can find what people actually used.
posted by jessamyn at 3:44 PM on May 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

Call the actual public library in the area? They might have old newspapers (with ads that will show phone numbers) or phone books that they can look this up in.
posted by brainmouse at 3:44 PM on May 19, 2020

You may want to see if the community has a "remember when in Anyville, USA?" FB group or something similar. I'm a member of two different small-town rural areas and this comes up a couple times a month and people really get into it talking about the exchanges and operators.
posted by Tchad at 3:45 PM on May 19, 2020

Here is another news clipping that indicate that Amherst actually was what people used there.
posted by jessamyn at 3:47 PM on May 19, 2020 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Jessamyn, Thank you! May I ask what steps you took to procure the info? ~ longhaultrucker
posted by longhaultrucker at 4:00 PM on May 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

Well I spent some fruitless time searching on the local county library's website and the Utah State Library website and then I checked to see if the Internet Archive had old yearbooks for that period (no). Then I went to a genealogy site and poked around to see if there were local news sources that I was missing, and then looked on this page. I thought "Oh hey I have a Newspapers.com account" and so I did a search there for Taylorsville, limited it to anything between 1950 and 1960 and looked for display ads with phone numbers. I found a few that indicated that AM was right for both Taylorsville and Bennion. Then I checked the Wikipedia page to make sure I knew what was meant by "phone exchanges" where they have the recommended central office names. I decided to go on a hunch and did a search for the words taylorsville and call and Amherst 6 to see if I could find some ads that used that phrasing and that's how I found the second link. Should probably mention I'm a librarian for a job, and love a challenge.
posted by jessamyn at 4:11 PM on May 19, 2020 [31 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you so much!
posted by longhaultrucker at 4:13 PM on May 19, 2020

Of interest but not answer:
The Telephone EXchange Name Project
posted by zengargoyle at 5:32 PM on May 19, 2020 [2 favorites]

Damn! Gotta love librarians! <3 <3 <3
posted by kate4914 at 5:33 PM on May 19, 2020 [2 favorites]