PRAIRIE GROVE -- Collecting quarters from the phone booth in front of the Colonial Motel got to be more trouble than it was worth.
Every six months, the pay phone would yield about $2.
So David Parks decided to make local calls free.
"It's not worth really going to get the money, so why not let them call for free?" said Parks, who is president of Prairie Grove Telephone Co., known locally as PGTelco.
Parks said it's a public service.
Besides the phone booth, PGTelco has eight pay-phone kiosks that also are now free for local calls. The free local-calling area includes Fayetteville, 12 miles to the northeast of Prairie Grove, and Devil's Den State Park, 36 miles to the south.
"Just let them be a convenience for someone who might want to use them," said Parks.
Parks said all nine pay phones together yielded an average of $4.75 per month this year. In some places, like Devil's Den, pay phones are needed because cellphone service is spotty at best. PGTelco has three pay phones at Devil's Den.
Parks said he made the change to free local calls a couple of months ago. Credit cards are required at the pay phones for long-distance calls. But 911 emergency calls are also free.
The phone booth in front of the Colonial Motel was placed on the National Register of Historic Places last November. It's the only telephone booth to hold such a distinction, said Patrick Andrus, a historian with the National Register.
Generally, properties must be at least 50 years old to be listed on the National Register, which is administered by the National Park Service.
Parks said he believes the phone booth was installed in 1959. In 2014, the phone booth was run over by a dozing motorist. But it was repaired and still has the classic midcentury telephone booth look with the red "TELEPHONE" sign along the top.
Telephone booths were part of American culture throughout the 20th century. The Prairie Grove booth is an example of the Airlight booths that used to be posted along highways and streets throughout the United States.
Ralph Wilcox, the National Register/survey coordinator for the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, noted the significance of the Airlight distinction in his nomination for the National Register listing.
Before the Airlight was developed in 1954, telephone booths were made of wood and were inside buildings, wrote Wilcox.
The Airlight's metal-and-glass construction could hold up to the elements, he wrote. And this booth was strategically placed to serve the motoring public -- on U.S. 62 in front of the Colonial Motel and across from the entrance to Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park.
Like motels and diners, telephone booths were a symbol of the open road.
"Like a lighthouse on the highway," according to a 1959 Bell Telephone advertisement touting the Airlight's nighttime visibility.
"Outdoor telephone booths began to appear in the 1940s during World War II at military bases, and they allowed military personnel to make calls to families back home," according to the nomination form. "However, it was during the 1950s that they became prevalent on the American landscape."
There were 2.6 million pay phones in the United States by 1996, according to the National Register nomination. But cellphones have largely replaced telephone booths.
Wilcox said he knows of only two telephone booths with working phones in Arkansas. The other one is in Bluffton, in Yell County, not far from a place called Mad Dog Hill.
The Prairie Grove phone booth is more of a tourist attraction today. Parks said he sees people stop there to take photos of themselves on the phone, perhaps emulating William Eggleston's 1974 photo of Walter Hopps in a California phone booth.
Parks said there was a spike in usage of the telephone booth after the National Register publicity last year.
"People will go use it just for the novelty of it," he said.
Parks said he thought about putting a plaque on a pedestal near the Prairie Grove phone booth to inform people about its significance on the National Register.
"We talk about it, and then we forget about it," he said. "It's still possible, but I don't know when."
Metro on 11/25/2016