Southern California, specifically the Los Angeles extended metro area,
> has been a *HODGE PODGE* of General Telephone (or their predecessors)
> and Pacific Telephone going back to the 1920s. The GTE areas were the
> early dial independent telcos that had originally come about prior to
> the 1920s as competitors to Pacific Tel (Bell).
> There was also some Continental Telephone in the mix, mostly to the
> east of the basic L.A. Metro Area, but Contel was taken over by GTE in
> the early 1990s.
> The Palm Springs area further to the east is exclusively GTE.
Contel never saw the ocean side of the So Cal mountains.
The pockets of pre-GTE that were in the San Fernando Valley, Sierra Madre/Monrovia and Palm Springs was California Water and Telephone.
GTE took that over in 1967.
Contel showed up to take over some funky company that served Victorvile and Eastern Sierra Telephone that served Ridgecrest, the Owens Valley and the Eastern High Sierra. That was circa 1950.
Again,
Contel was never, ever in the Los Angeles Basin.