Wouldn't all that open-wire be a copper thief's dream! No insulation to burn off.

Contrary to previous posts, Beach Street is on the mainland. The railroad is several blocks inland. Looking north, the picture is at the location of the "historic" section of Beach Street across from City Island -- a bridge to to the island appears through the trees(?). In fact I was at the library on City Island very recently. Know this section of road well as it is today -- trust me: a great deal of change.

Beach Street in Daytona runs North South and is on the Mainland, West of the intracoastal waterway. It is not on the barrier island.

Those telephone wires had the ability to service much more than one phone each due to the "party line" feature. Even as late as the mid 1940's our house was on a 8 party line. Some how we only heard 4 rings. you had to remember which combination of long and short rings was for your phone. No listening in to other peoples calls, wait for your turn, and vacate the line imediately if someone declares an emergency!

Those are the days before telephone cables had the wires all bundled together and held captive inside an outer rubber jacket.

Of course now-a-days a Fiber Optics cable can pass many signals over one strand of glass filament.

It looks like there might be 12 crossarms on those telephone poles with a total capacity of 120 lines. I always wondered how many telephone numbers one line could serve.

Some connection here to the pioneering Florida merchant William Burdine or his son John. Their chain of Burdine's department stores eventually morphed into Macy's Florida.

I'm not positive, but I think the main line of the Florida East Coast Railway might be out of view to the right, and those telephone/telegraph poles are following it. I can see what looks like a type of guard rail in the extreme right of the photo, and I think the FEC ran right through the middle of most of the towns along, well, the Florida east coast (duh).

Update: The FEC is not out of sight behind the telephone poles. Like many east coast beaches Daytona is on a barrier island; the FEC ran slightly inland on firmer ground, on the other side of the present-day Intracoastal Waterway (probably just a saltmarsh back then).

Look at the power lines and poles to the right of the photo. That's incredible.

[Those are telephone lines. - tterrace]