Cathy Morgan gets by just fine heating her mountainside home with a wood fireplace. And she has no gripes about slogging 10 yards through mud or snow to use her outhouse.
In fact, Morgan and many of the 150 other denizens of Iowa Hill, the old Placer County mining camp, say they are happy living without certain conveniences of modern life – except one.
"Electricity, I don't care about, but telephones we need," said Morgan, a scrappy 68-year-old who lives in a home built of rocks and still searches for gold in her backyard mine.
One hundred thirty-two years since Alexander Graham Bell's famous invention and as much of the country goes wireless, Iowa Hill is finally getting good old-fashioned land line telephone service.
It's high time, say the townsfolk. Many recall the story of 7-year-old Tommy Reynolds, whose foot got tangled in a wood splitter in 1995 and whose parents struggled to find a cell phone signal to call for help. (Reynolds ended up losing some toes, although he is now reportedly doing fine.)
Phone companies long resisted laying the necessary copper lines, saying Iowa Hill was too remote, and too few people lived there. But thanks to a $2.5 million state grant and the commitment of a local phone company, Iowa Hill residents will get hooked up as early as summer.
When that happens, Iowa Hill will leave a surprisingly long list of far-flung California communities still lacking telephone service: Lost Hills in Fresno County, Pine Mountain in Kern County and Siskiyou County's Eddy Gulch, Godfrey Ranch and Swillup Creek, to name a few.
"We're trying to get basic connectivity to these people," said Rachelle Chong of the California Public Utilities Commission, which doles out grants to the rural areas under a 2001 state law. "It's about making sure there's no digital divide in California."
While it may be hard to fathom that California towns still don't have 19th century technology eight years into the 21st, the treacherous drive to Iowa Hill offers some explanation of why it's taken so long.
Iowa Hill is just nine miles from Colfax, a popular food stop off Interstate 80 between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. But the drive, in the words of one recent visitor, is "insane," full of blind, railing-less, one-lane turns with names like "Dead Man's Curve."
Locals still talk about the guy who once tried to drive a motor home this way and instead drove off the cliff, tumbling 1,000 feet to his death on the American River canyon floor.
Iowa Hill may be backwoods, home to its share of property-rights types, off-the-grid hippies and self-described tramp miners. But it's not backward.
Most residents have cell phones. It's just that with all the canyons and ravines, the service is rotten. To get reception, they must drive to a clearing, such as the lookout on the east side of town known as "Telephone Hill."
As part of a deal finalized in December, the Foresthill Telephone Co. will provide service to 80 or so households. The company will use microwave signals to overcome Iowa Hill's formidable topography, beaming an outside signal to a tower under construction by the river. Depending on where residents live, they will either receive a wireless or copper-wire connection.
It promises to be a tough job, especially in winter, when dirt roads are often muddy or icy.
"We've got some terrain issues," said Foresthill Telephone Co. Vice President Mitch Drake. But "we're up to the challenge."
Natives say they appreciate the can-do spirit. Iowa Hill is known for it.
During its Gold Rush heyday, as many as 10,000 miners came from as far away as China and Prussia to strike it rich in Iowa Hill. By 1880, the mines had yielded some $20 million. Yet many miners died ingloriously, according to a roster of the dead at the town cemetery. Cave-ins, murders, rheumatism.
Reporters flocked to Iowa Hill in the late 1980s when a Hatfield-McCoylike dispute erupted between owners of the town's lone business – the Iowa Hill Store – and a band of gun-toting derelicts. One resident told the Colfax Record: "It was hippie squatters vs. the redneck landowners."
Things have since settled down, and residents say they enjoy Iowa Hill's hassle-free way of life. The store remains the center of action, receiving town mail deliveries three times a week.
"Whatcha up to today?" inquired manager Lynea Daniels, as a local sidled up to the store fireplace crackling underneath a giant rack of moose antlers.
"Ah, nothing," replied Kristy Taylor. "It's Iowa Hill."
Outside, Taylor's 12-year-old son, Marc, pedaled his bicycle around in circles. Asked about growing up in a phoneless town, he responded: "Bor-ing."
He had tacked up a sign looking for work clearing brush or splitting wood. He included his cell phone number. No one called. At least nobody that could get through.
For Cathy Morgan, the campaign to bring phones to Iowa Hill was personal.
She arrived in 1985 with her husband, Le Roy, who'd secured mining rights on a 6-acre property east of the store. The couple put in 12-hour days sifting through bedrock for precious golden flakes. Morgan estimates they found more than 20 ounces.
But a lifetime of mining had damaged Le Roy's lungs. Two years ago, he suffered a blood clot and collapsed.
Morgan said she spent a half-hour trying to get a cell phone signal to call 911.
"If I could've gotten an ambulance" more quickly, she said, "I could've kept him around longer."
After Le Roy's death, Morgan stepped up her campaign for phones, knocking on doors and collecting signatures. Placer County Supervisor Bruce Kranz offered support.
Morgan said she's relieved the technology is finally coming to Iowa Hill. But don't count on her abandoning her old-time ways. She says county code enforcement keeps telling her it's time to upgrade to a septic tank. She sees little need. "It's a perfectly good outhouse."
Call The Bee's Todd Milbourn, (916) 321-1063.
