The story starts in May 1997, when an Arizona man named Godfrey Daniels, who went by "Deuce of Clubs" online, received a copy of the independent punk zine *Wig Out!* at a show for the band Girl Trouble5. In the Letters to the Editor section, a Californian identified only as "Mr. N" described finding a telephone booth in the middle of the Mojave Desert, 15 miles from the main highway10. Mr. N had spotted a phone icon on a desert road map, driven out to investigate, and discovered the booth was still operational. He included the number: (619) 733-9969, which later changed to area code 7605.

Daniels became obsessed. He called the number several times a day for about a month, even sticking a note on his bathroom mirror that read "Have you called the Mojave Desert today?"10. Nobody answered. Then one day he got a busy signal, which meant someone was actually using the phone. He dialed frantically until the line opened, and a woman named Lorene picked up6. She was a cinder miner who lived off the grid and used the booth for her own calls7. They chatted, made small talk, and in his excitement Daniels forgot to ask where the booth actually was6.

He tracked it down anyway, drove out with a friend during a lightning storm, and made calls from the booth10. Then he went home and built a website, *The Mojave Phone Booth Site*, publishing the number for the world9. In 1997, that was enough to start something.

The Mojave Phone Booth was one of the first real-world locations to go viral thanks to the internet, years before "going viral" was even a phrase7. The *LA Times* covered it twice, in 1999 and 200023. *Salon*, *The Guardian*, and numerous international publications ran features18. NPR's *Snap Judgment* dedicated an episode to it, and *99% Invisible* produced a full podcast covering the saga69.

The booth inspired the 2006 independent film *Mojave Phone Booth*, which won multiple festival awards including Best Feature at the Stony Brook Film Festival and Audience Award at the Kansas International Film Festival13. French artist Sophie Calle created a Gehry-designed phone booth installation in Paris as a direct homage9. British novelist J.G. Ballard called the booth's website "accidental poetry" and described it as "a kind of talismanic object"9.

The Deuce of Clubs website noted that "the Mojave Phone Booth staked its final claim to fame when it became the first (and probably only) Internet meme ever to be targeted for destruction by the United States Government"9. An online petition was created to protest its removal, though the petition platform has since been retired9.

The booth had been installed in the 1960s, though some accounts place the original installation as early as 194814. California law required telephone companies to provide service to isolated locations even if the lines were unprofitable, and the booth served workers at a nearby volcanic cinder mine near the Cima volcanic field8. For decades it sat in obscurity, used only by miners and the occasional desert traveler. Its only company was Joshua trees, telephone poles, and passing coyotes10.

The internet changed everything. After Daniels launched his site in 1997, the booth's story spread through early web communities at a pace that now looks quaint but was electric at the time. People forwarded news clippings from international papers and magazines to Daniels, who posted them on his site6. The booth became what the *Daily Dot* later called "an incredible social networking platform and connectivity conduit," an accidental prototype of an internet chat room where anonymous strangers could connect through the simple act of picking up a ringing phone in the desert4.

One man camped out among the Joshua trees for an entire month and answered five hundred phone calls10. Rick Karr, a 51-year-old self-described spiritual wanderer, said he was "instructed by the Holy Spirit" to travel to the desert and answer calls2. A USC graduate student named Kaarina Roberto began camping at the site with her husband, answering the phone as it rang through the night, and planned to produce a documentary on the whole thing3. One fan even planned to get married at the booth after meeting his fiancee there3.

Not everyone was happy. Park rangers confiscated the quartz stones visitors used to spell out the phone number for aerial viewers1. Someone stole the phone's receiver at one point1. The Mojave National Preserve, established in 1994 under National Park Service management, began fielding reports of litter, off-trail driving, unauthorized camping, and unattended campfires near the booth3. Mike Reynolds, a preserve spokesman, said staff found "a ton of trash in the area" and stranded motorists who tried reaching the booth without four-wheel drive3.

On May 17, 2000, with no public notice, workers removed the booth3. Pacific Bell and the National Park Service issued a joint statement saying "increased public traffic had a negative impact on the desert environment in the nation's newest national park"11. The phone number was disconnected. Lorene Caffee, owner of the nearby Cima Cinder Mine, was not convinced. "It stinks," she told the *Las Vegas Sun*. "Isn't that what a park is for, for people to visit?"11.

The removal triggered an outpouring of grief online. Fans kept visiting the concrete slab where the booth once stood, treating it like a tombstone and leaving offerings6. Someone constructed an actual headstone for the booth10. The National Park Service broke up the concrete pad and removed that too, and blocked attempts to install a commemorative plaque6. "Public lands are not there to allow individuals to put whatever they want out there," said park archaeologist Dave Nichols. "But I understand the sentiment, of course"10.

The booth's story didn't end with its physical destruction. In 2006, director John Putch released *Mojave Phone Booth*, an independent film starring Annabeth Gish and Steve Guttenberg about four Las Vegas strangers drawn to a desert phone booth13. The film won awards at HDFest, the Kansas International Film Festival, and the Stony Brook Film Festival13. That same year, French conceptual artist Sophie Calle inaugurated a phone booth art installation in Paris inspired by the Mojave booth, designed by architect Frank Gehry9.

In August 2013, Jered Morgan, a phone phreak and white-hat hacker known as Lucky225, announced he had acquired the original number4. Pacific Bell had claimed its policy was to "permanently retire" the number, but Morgan discovered AT&T had sold the 760-733-99xx block to a competitive local exchange carrier. He ordered the number and set it up as a VoIP conference call line4. Anyone dialing 760-733-9969 could now enter a virtual version of the Mojave Phone Booth experience, potentially finding a stranger on the other end or talking into digital emptiness7.

In August 2014, NPR's *Snap Judgment* aired a story about Daniels and the booth9. That same month, Daniels launched a Kickstarter campaign to publish *Adventures with the Mojave Phone Booth*, a book he'd been working on for over a decade9. The book was eventually published in 20189.