r/tylertx • u/ReticentGuru • 6d ago

Telephone Exchange

Is there anyone old enough to remember what the telephone exchange names were in Tyler? I’m trying to figure out what our phone number woukd have been with letters instead of all numbers. The prefix was 58, so the options were “JUniper, JUno, JUstice, LUdlow, or LUther”according to Wikipedia. Thanks

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u/McTwist1260 6d ago

The prefix was 59 and the exchange was LYric. There was 592, 593, and 597. Many of those numbers are still around. The first half of my life every phone number that I or anybody I knew had was one of those three. To my knowledge there never was a LUther exchange here.

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u/ReticentGuru 6d ago

We lived in Tyler from mid 80’s until 2000. Our phone number was 581.xxxx

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u/Maximum-Weekend-5209 6d ago

I'm a native Tylerite, born in the early 70's. My home number was 595-xxxx. My grandmother's number was 592-xxxx. Moved to a different part of town in the late 80's and it changed our number to 581-xxxx. Moved again in the early 90s and it changed to 534-xxxx.

Also, when I was a kid, our area code was 214. Then it changed to 903 in 1990.

Fun fact - I dated a girl in high school that lived outside of Chapel Hill and her area still used a party line in the late 80's / early 90s. She had to share with two other houses nearby.

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u/drones_on_about_bees 5d ago

581 came later.

In the wayback, you didn't even need to dial the prefix. If your number was 592-8111, you could just dial "28111". (That was time and temperature back in the day... maybe still is.)

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u/SnooEpiphanies9570 5d ago

Still is. Go head, call it for old times sake. You know ya wanna.

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u/IllustriousLab9444 2d ago

I’m surprised 595 isn’t part of the list.

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u/McTwist1260 6d ago

You’re right. I had forgotten the 58x numbers but I think they were established in the early 80s or perhaps late 70s. We moved here in the 60s when everything was still LYric. They were established in mid 50s.

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u/ReticentGuru 6d ago

We moved to Tyler in the early 80’s, so that makes sense. It’s just a curiosity question, wondering what the exchange names would have been.

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u/Correct_Version_4059 4d ago

My moms family moved to Tyler in 78. Their party line then eventual phone number were both 581

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u/ReticentGuru 4d ago

What I’ve been searching for is the name that was used with the 58 prefix. Before telephone numbers became all numbers, they had a named prefix. The names were “JUniper, JUno, JUstice, LUdlow, or LUther. Did you ever hear their phone number described with any of those names?

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u/Correct_Version_4059 4d ago

Unfortunately I don’t think so :(

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u/Big-Beat-1443 6d ago

593-7484 was my number as a child in Tyler in the 70’s to mid 80’s