Review by Ed Quillen
Telephony – June 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine
Mid-Mountain Regional Directory
1995 edition
Desert Bloom, Inc.
This telephone directory is annoying because it has the potential to be useful, and it doesn’t quite make the grade.
Without a few days to check everything in it, I certainly can’t point to all that’s wrong with the Mid-Mountain Directory, but there are some glaring flaws which appeared immediately.
I noticed the first flaw when I grabbed a phone book so I could call Salerno Service about scheduling some auto maintenance. It wasn’t in this book, even though Pete Salerno’s shop number has been listed for at least 20 years.
The flaws start on the first page, which gives Westcliffe a separate number for 911 emergency calls when, in fact, Custer County just installed a 911 system which went on line in March.
Thumb to page 10, and there’s a map with the new area code for the Western Slope and northeastern Colorado. The new area code is 970, but the Mid-Mountain Directory says it is 907, which is actually the area code for all of Alaska.
Then there’s the question of territory. For understandable reasons, I’d like a “Central Colorado Directory” that covered our territory. This comes close, but omits Saguache — a local call from Salida — as well as Crestone and Moffat. No Gunnison, either.
So you can’t find all the regional numbers you might need in this book, you can’t find regular listed numbers, you could blow an emergency call in the Wet Mountain Valley, and you might reach somebody in Nome when you were trying for Gunnison.
Too bad, because the Mid-Mountain Directory has many virtues. There’s a reverse listing which enables you to find the name if you’ve got the number. Local government offices, schools, libraries, and post offices all get handy sections of their own. There’s a schedule of events, and a list of attractions. There are detailed maps of populated subdivisions as well as towns — a blessing when you’re trying to find someone on Roaring Aspen Circle or the like.
Let’s hope Desert Bloom fixes the flaws for next year’s edition, because the overall concept is good even if there are so many problems with the execution that you’d be foolish to trust the 1995 edition of this directory.
— E.Q.
