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Cellpic Sunday – Wow! A Working Pay Phone (Nope)

Pay phone at Koke’e State Park.

April, 2025.
Kauai, Hawaii.

Waimea Canyon Drive, also known as State Route 550, stretches approximately 19 miles (30 km) from Waimea to the Pu‘u O Kila Lookout on the island of Kauai. It ascends over 4,000 feet (1219 m) along the way, offering breathtaking views of Waimea Canyon and the Na Pali Coast. In a future post, I’ll share many more interesting views of Waimea Canyon. I found a pay phone for today’s post. Unfortunately, it is no longer available for use.

We stayed in Kalaheo, about ten miles (16 km) from Waimea and the start of the Waimea Canyon Drive. Our rental car had Android Auto that linked wirelessly to my Samsung S23U, giving us access to Google Maps for navigation and my SiriusXM account for music—well, only part of the way up the canyon.

Somewhere along the way, as we climbed, the music stopped. The phone had zero bars. The pre-loaded map still gave us the route, but since the road is the only major route up the mountain, even that wasn’t necessary.

Eventually, we came to the Koke’e State Park’s museum and restaurant. We stopped for lunch, and I noticed the pay phone while walking from the parking area. I assumed it was working for people who need to make a call, especially since the sign on the museum said, “Car Problems? Call your rental agency.” It’s not easy to do when there’s no cell service. And, I checked. That phone no longer functions.

Google estimates there are fewer than 100,000 operational phone booths in the United States. As of 2016, Hawaii still had more than its share of operational pay phones due to the remote nature of the islands. While cell phone coverage is generally good in populated areas of Hawaii, there are specific locations, particularly in more rural or mountainous regions, where it is less reliable. More recent anecdotal evidence from late 2023 and early 2024 suggests that even in Hawaii, working pay phones are becoming increasingly scarce, with some being removed due to a lack of use and maintenance.

About the photo: I captured it with my Samsung S23U. When I returned to our rental house, I transferred the image to my laptop for processing with Adobe Lightroom Classic. There was a small wooden stand near the phone booth. I used the Remove tool to erase the stand. I used the Auto button in the Develop module to tweak the settings and uploaded it to Flickr in 2K HD. If interested, you can click on the image above to view it and examine the metadata there.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s also acceptable. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

41 comments

    • I’d love to find one that works (I did, in London, a couple of years ago.) It was in one of those iconic red booths, and it was a pay phone that accepted electronic credit card payments as well.

      Reply

  18. Hi John, I almost thought I didn’t have anything for your today, but I posted the picture of the four bloggers, which is a cell picture. The rest of them are old from my Canon. Your pay phone reminded me of a writing challenge a few months ago with several pictures of disconnected pay phones, and you were supposed to have a conversation with someone no longer with us.

    Reply

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