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

Pay phone at Kōke‘e State Park.

April, 2025.
Kaua‘i, Hawai‘i.

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 Kaua‘i. It ascends over 4,000 feet (1219 m) along the way, offering breathtaking views of Waimea Canyon and the Nāpali 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 Kālaheo, 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 preloaded map still showed the route, but since the road is the only major route up the mountain, even that wasn’t necessary.

Eventually, we came to the Kōke‘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 without 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, Hawai‘i still had more than its share of pay phones due to the islands’ remote nature. While cell phone coverage is generally good in populated areas of Hawai‘i, it is less reliable in more rural or mountainous regions. More recent anecdotal evidence from late 2023 and early 2024 suggests that, even in Hawai‘i, working pay phones are becoming increasingly scarce, with some removed due to lack of use and maintenance.

About the photo: I captured it with my Samsung S23 Ultra. 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 the image above to view it on my Flickr gallery and examine its metadata.

I invite fellow bloggers to join in by creating their own Cellpic Sunday posts. There’s no set theme. The first rule is that your photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or other mobile device. The second rule is simple: link your challenge response to this post or drop a comment here with your link so others can find it. And remember, despite the name, there’s no penalty for sharing on a day other than 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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