"From the earliest days, telephone companies put short stretches of wire inside cables to safely cross bodies of water, such as the Hudson River. Wires in cables had much higher attenuation than open wires, because while in open wires resistance was the only cause of attenuation, in cables, there were two additional causes, capacitance and induction. Cables thus were at first only used where open wires couldn’t be strung."

https://ethw.org/Telephone_Transmission

Long distance open wire had one tenth the attenuation of cable circuits and remained in service through the mid 1960's in Florida. I began work with AT&T in Jacksonville, Florida in 1961. Our open wire line to the West which carried our TD2 microwave radio alarm circuits, was lost to a railroad derailment around 1964. Our last remaining J carrier (12 voice circuits superimposed on open wire) went down in 1966 when someone cut 4 spans of copper wire just outside of Ft Pierce, Florida. The circuits remained out of action until space was found on either cable (L3) or microwave radio (TD2).

Good times.

I was wondering the same thing, so I Googled and found this:

https://www.copper.org/applications/telecomm/consumer/evolution.html

It appears that the first multiwire telephone cables began to be used around 1887 and by 1891, an improved, paper insulated standard cable was being used.

So those wires weren't long for this world.

Just one painless dentist sign, and it could have been Fortooth, Duluth.

I can't keep track of the wiring on my model railroad.

Hard to imagine that every wire on these poles went to its intended phone.