In 1997, a prolific columnist in Arizona was made aware of a payphone in California's Mojave desert, several miles off Interstate 15 on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Obsessed with this lonesome artifact, he began calling it daily at (760) 733-9969 until a local resident named Lorene Caffee actually answered it.
After publishing accounts of his experiences with the booth on his web site Deuce Of Clubs the booth became internationally famous, attracting visitors, media, and callers from everywhere. Tom Brokaw even narrated a news segment about the booth during a prime time NBC news broadcast. The booth had also become a popular diversion for hipsters on their way to Burning Man, and groups of people would regularly camp out near the booth, ready to answer calls from all over the world.
It couldn't last forever, though. The booth was clearly too famous for its own good, drawing negative attention from both the phone company and the government. In September, 2000, after enjoying years of media popularity, the booth vanished, the result of a very unceremonious removal by the phone company. All that is left are the photos and stories from the thousands of people whose lives were permanently changed by the booth.