A clear glass Hemingray insulator, still on a piece of its wooden pin, found on a property in Jasper. Probably from the Elwood telephone line, 1907 to 1955.
A clear glass pin insulator, found on a property in Jasper. It is still threaded onto a broken piece of its wooden pin, with an iron spike driven through the wood. Lichen has grown on the pin, so it lay outdoors for a long time.
HEMINGRAY is embossed on the skirt. The line below it is too worn to read with confidence, so the model number is not recorded here. The bottom edge carries a ring of small beads, the drip points Hemingray patented in 1893 to shed rain off the glass.
An insulator like this sat on top of a pole or crossarm and held a telephone or telegraph wire clear of the wood.
In 1907 the Colorado Telephone Company built a telephone line over Elwood Pass and down the East Fork of the San Juan toward Pagosa Springs. In 1911 it passed to the Mountain States Telephone Company, which built a line shack at Elwood that year for the crews who kept it up. The Forest Service, which now rents that cabin out, describes it as built to support crews maintaining the transcontinental telephone line, and says remnants of the line can still be found along Iron Creek.
Mountain States ran the line until 1955. That May the section from Platoro to Yellow Jacket was sold to Jud Thiele of the Pagosa Springs Telephone Company, who sold it on to Oswald Reeves and his family in October 1956. The line was then discontinued and the wire salvaged. Poles still stand along parts of the old road.
The road to Stunner, Platoro and Elwood Pass runs up the Alamosa River through Jasper, and the photograph of Jasper from about 1910 to 1920 shows poles carrying a wire along that road. That makes it likely the poles in the photograph carried the Elwood line, and that this insulator came off it. No source found so far names Jasper on the route.
The line is remembered locally as the transcontinental line, and the Forest Service uses the same name. It is not the AT&T line that made the first coast to coast call in January 1915. That one ran west from Denver to Salt Lake City and Wendover, well to the north.
The glass fits the Elwood line. Hemingray made its insulators in aqua glass until the early 1930s and moved to clear glass from about 1930 to 1933. A clear Hemingray is most likely from the 1930s or after. If this one came off the Elwood line, it was fitted as a replacement while Mountain States was keeping the line up, before it closed in 1955.
What is not known. The exact route of the line through the valley, whether it served Jasper itself, and when this insulator went up.
Sources: Pagosa Springs visitor site, The History of Elwood. USDA Forest Service, Elwood Cabin listing on recreation.gov. Engineering and Technology History Wiki, Transcontinental Telephone Service. Hemingray glass colour dating from collector references including hemingray.info and glassbottlemarks.com.
Where did the Elwood telephone line run through the valley, and did it serve Jasper itself? A record of the line, or a memory of the poles, would help. If you know, or you know someone who might, the curator would like to hear from you. Quote JM-2026-0210 and it will be clear which item you mean.
Tell the curator