# Mojave Phone Booth

> Mojave Phone Booth is a 1997 internet-to-real-world phenomenon centered on a bullet-riddled pay phone in California's Mojave National Preserve, which Doc Daniels publicized online, sparking global pilgrimages of strangers seeking to answer calls in the desert.

The Mojave Phone Booth was a lone, bullet-riddled telephone booth sitting in the middle of California's Mojave National Preserve, roughly 15 miles from the nearest paved road. After an Arizona man named Godfrey "Doc" Daniels discovered it through a zine in 1997 and built a website sharing its phone number, the booth became one of the earliest internet-to-real-world viral sensations, drawing callers from around the globe and pilgrims who camped out just to answer a ringing phone in the desert. Pacific Bell removed it in May 2000 due to environmental concerns, but the number was resurrected in 2013 as a VoIP conference line by a phone phreak named Jered Morgan.

## Origin
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 Trouble[5]. 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 highway[10]. 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 760[5].

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 up[6]. She was a cinder miner who lived off the grid and used the booth for her own calls[7]. They chatted, made small talk, and in his excitement Daniels forgot to ask where the booth actually was[6].

He tracked it down anyway, drove out with a friend during a lightning storm, and made calls from the booth[10]. Then he went home and built a website, *The Mojave Phone Booth Site*, publishing the number for the world[9]. In 1997, that was enough to start something.

- **Platform:** Deuce of Clubs personal website (tribute site), early web forums (viral spread)
- **Creator:** Godfrey "Doc" Daniels (website creator / popularizer), Mr. N (original zine letter writer)
- **Date:** 1997

## Overview
The Mojave Phone Booth was a Pacific Bell payphone installed decades earlier to service volcanic cinder miners in what later became the Mojave National Preserve[2]. It sat at a dusty crossroads along a line of wooden power poles, 14 miles from the nearest paved road and about 75 miles southwest of Las Vegas[1]. The booth's windows had long been blasted out by desert gunslingers, its coin box was deactivated, and it looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic film[2]. But it worked. And when the internet got hold of its phone number in 1997, this forgotten piece of infrastructure turned into an accidental social experiment. People called from every continent, at all hours, hoping someone might pick up. Others drove out through treacherous dirt roads just to be the one who answered[2].

## How It Spread
The website struck a chord with early internet culture. People began calling the booth and, increasingly, making the trek out to answer it themselves[1]. Daniels made several pilgrimages between August 1997 and July 1999, documenting each trip with photographs on his site[5].

On September 18, 1999, the *Los Angeles Times* ran a feature story headlined "The Loneliest Phone Booth in the World," reporting that callers included a bored housewife from New Zealand, a German high school student, a Seattle stockbroker, and an Atlanta man who heard about it "from one of the ladies on our pet skunk e-mail list"[2]. The Times reporter fielded calls himself while visiting, talking to strangers he'd never otherwise have known existed[4]. Fans decorated the booth with a nude Barbie doll, Band-Aids over bullet holes, and stones spelling out its number visible from the air "so even aliens can find it"[2].

In November 1999, the fan site Cinder Peak Phone launched, giving the booth a new nickname[12]. In January 2000, Salon ran its own feature, calling Daniels an "Internet cowboy" and noting the booth had inspired television commercials, a short story, and an indie film[1]. Art Bell's late-night radio program *Coast to Coast AM* also featured the booth, encouraging listeners to dial the number during broadcasts, which sent waves of simultaneous callers to the desert line[14].

By early 2000, the phone was ringing dozens of times a day. Visitors answered more than 200 calls daily during peak periods[3]. Two women from New York drove out, stripped naked in the desert heat, and answered 72 calls in four and a half hours, greeting callers with "Mojave Desert. How may I direct your call?"[3].

## How to Use
The Mojave Phone Booth isn't a meme template in the traditional sense. There's no image macro or caption format. Instead, it functions as a shared reference point and a story people retell. The "use" is the call itself: dialing 760-733-9969 and seeing who, if anyone, picks up on the conference line[4]. People also reference the booth in discussions about early internet culture, the romance of analog technology, or the way online communities can transform forgotten physical spaces. The booth's story often gets invoked when talking about internet-to-IRL crossover events, pre-social-media virality, or the loss of quirky internet-era artifacts.

## Cultural Impact
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 phrase[7]. The *LA Times* covered it twice, in 1999 and 2000[2][3]. *Salon*, *The Guardian*, and numerous international publications ran features[1][8]. NPR's *Snap Judgment* dedicated an episode to it, and *99% Invisible* produced a full podcast covering the saga[6][9].

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 Festival[13]. French artist Sophie Calle created a Gehry-designed phone booth installation in Paris as a direct homage[9]. 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 retired[9].

## Fun Facts
- Daniels first learned about the booth from a letter by "Mr. N" in a punk zine called *Wig Out!* that he picked up at a Girl Trouble concert[5].
- The first person to answer Daniels' calls was Lorene, a cinder miner who used the booth as her personal phone since she lived off the grid[7].
- Visitors spelled out the phone number in stones large enough to be seen from the air, which park rangers repeatedly confiscated[1].
- A USC graduate student was producing a documentary about the booth phenomenon when it was removed[3].
- The original area code was 619 before changing to 760, and Pacific Bell claimed the number would be "permanently retired" after removal[4].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is the Mojave Phone Booth?
The Mojave Phone Booth was a solitary payphone located in California's Mojave National Preserve, about 15 miles from the nearest paved road. After its number spread online in 1997, people from around the world called it and visited it until Pacific Bell removed it in May 2000[11].

### Where did the Mojave Phone Booth come from?
The booth was installed in the 1960s to serve volcanic cinder miners working near the Cima volcanic field in the Mojave Desert. California law required phone companies to provide service to isolated locations[8]. It gained internet fame in 1997 when Godfrey "Doc" Daniels created a website about it[9].

### What does the Mojave Phone Booth mean?
The booth became a symbol of unexpected human connection in a pre-social-media era. Calling a phone in the middle of nowhere and having a stranger pick up felt like reaching across a void, and the experience drew people who craved serendipitous interaction with strangers[6].

### How do you use the Mojave Phone Booth?
You can still dial the original number, 760-733-9969, which was acquired in 2013 by hacker Jered Morgan and set up as a VoIP conference call line. You might find someone on the other end, or you might find silence[4].

### Is the Mojave Phone Booth still popular?
The physical booth was removed in 2000 and even the concrete slab was demolished[6]. The number was revived in 2013 as a conference line[4]. The story is still widely referenced in internet history discussions and was the subject of a 2018 book by its original popularizer[9].

### Who was Godfrey "Doc" Daniels?
An Arizona-based computer programmer who discovered the booth's existence through a zine in May 1997 and became obsessed with calling it[10]. He created the tribute website that made the booth famous and later wrote a book about the experience titled *Adventures with the Mojave Phone Booth*[9].

### Who answered the first call?
After about a month of daily calling, Daniels reached a woman named Lorene, a cinder miner who lived off the grid near the booth and used it as her personal phone[7]. Her brother was one of the last people to use the booth before its removal[10].

### Why was the Mojave Phone Booth removed?
Pacific Bell and the National Park Service issued a joint statement in May 2000 citing that "increased public traffic had a negative impact on the desert environment"[11]. Park staff reported litter, unattended campfires, off-trail driving, and stranded motorists[3].

### What happened to the physical site after removal?
People kept visiting the concrete slab where the booth stood, leaving offerings as if it were a memorial. Someone built a headstone for the booth. The Park Service eventually destroyed the slab and blocked all attempts to install a plaque[6][10].

### Was a movie made about the Mojave Phone Booth?
Yes, a 2006 independent film called *Mojave Phone Booth*, directed by John Putch and starring Annabeth Gish and Steve Guttenberg, tells four interconnected stories about strangers drawn to the desert booth. It won multiple film festival awards[13].

### Can you still call the Mojave Phone Booth number?
Yes. In 2013, phone phreak Jered Morgan legally acquired the number 760-733-9969 and set it up as a VoIP conference call with no participant limit. Callers connect to whatever conversation is happening, or to silence[4].

### What is phreaking and how does it connect to the booth?
Phreaking is the study and exploration of telecommunication systems. Morgan, the hacker who revived the number, identified as a phreak interested in the sociology of phone systems. He monitored the number for years through a public system called NPAC before acquiring it when AT&T sold the number block to a smaller carrier[4].

## References
1. [The Mojave Phone Booth - Salon.com](<https://www.salon.com/2000/01/12/phone_2/>)
2. [What's new | Technology | The Guardian](<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/jun/01/onlinesupplement4>)
3. [The legendary Mojave Phone Booth is back](<https://dailydot.com/technology/mojave-phone-booth-back-number>)
4. [Mojave Phone Booth - Know Your Meme](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mojave-phone-booth>)
5. [Mojave Phone Booth](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Phone_Booth>)
6. [Phreaking](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking>)
7. [Girl Trouble official web page](<http://www.wig-out.com/>)
8. [The Original Mojave Phone Booth Site](<http://www.deuceofclubs.com/moj/mojave.htm>)
9. [CINDER PEAK PHONE aka The Mojave Phone Booth](<http://www.cinderpeak.com/>)
10. [How the 1997 Art Bell Broadcast Made the Mojave Phone Booth Famous
 – Headcount Coffee](<https://www.headcountcoffee.com/blogs/coffee-news/1997-art-bell-broadcast-turned-mojave-booth-myth>)
11. [Mojave phone booth: In the middle of the Mojave Desert sat an anomalous pay phone.](<https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/05/mojave-phone-booth-in-the-middle-of-the-mojave-desert-sat-an-anomalous-pay-phone.html>)
12. [The Mojave Phone Booth](<https://www.fatemag.com/post/the-mojave-phone-booth>)
13. [Mojave Phone Booth - 99% Invisible](<https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mojave-phone-booth/>)
14. [The phone booth installed in 1948 in a remote location in the Mojave Desert](<https://www.outono.net/elentir/2025/12/20/the-phone-booth-installed-in-1948-in-a-remote-location-in-the-mojave-desert/>)
15. [The Mojave Phone Booth - Salon.com](<http://www.salon.com/2000/01/12/phone_2/>)
16. [Petition Online - Petition Online has been retired](<http://www.petitiononline.com/mojavepb/petition.html>)
17. [What's new | Technology | The Guardian](<http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/jun/01/onlinesupplement4>)
18. [Mojave Phone Booth | Rotten Tomatoes](<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mojave-phone-booth/>)
19. [The loneliest phone booth in the world - Los Angeles Times](<http://articles.latimes.com/1999/sep/18/news/mn-11495>)
20. [Requiem for a Telephone Booth - Los Angeles Times](<http://articles.latimes.com/2000/may/30/news/cl-35421>)
21. [Famous isolated phone booth removed -
Las Vegas Sun News](<http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2000/may/22/famous-isolated-phone-booth-removed/>)
22. [The legendary Mojave Phone Booth is back](<http://www.dailydot.com/technology/mojave-phone-booth-back-number/>)

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