An Unexpected First

Monument to first long-distance phone call Monument to first long-distance phone call

On Pleasant Valley Road northwest of Nevada City, leading to Bridgeport (the Nevada County hamlet), this entirely unexpected monument appears at the side of the road in a tiny community named French Corral. The monument (close-up of text, below left) commemorates "the first long distance telephone in the world". That phone line, says the marker, connected two mines 58 miles away, one of them at French Corral. Near the marker is an apparently well-maintained but totally unoccupied Wells Fargo Express building.