When Alexander Graham Bell said, “Mr. Watson, Come here, I want to see you” into an early version of the telephone, it wouldn’t be heard in Garrett County, Maryland, until 1900. William A. Smith of Hoyes built the first telephone line in the county between the general stores in Sang Run and Hoyes. This allowed callers to speak with one another, but only in those two locations. “This is considered remarkable when one realizes Bell secured his Patent in 1876, the A. T. & T. company was formed in 1884 and 16 years later when the Bell had hardly gotten out of New Haven, Connecticut, we find a telephone line constructed and operating so far away from the field of the then telephone activity,” W. Russell Pancake, engineer assistant with the C & P Telephone Company told the Oakland Rotary Read more…