History of Meagher County Dispatch

From as far back as is known, Meagher County Dispatch has been operated out of the Sheriff’s Office. In the early years, the Sheriff’s residence was in the basement of the jail, and the Sheriff’s wife ran the radio and also fed the prisoners.

Later on, the office held more official hours, and was manned by a Dispatcher from 8:00am till 02:00 am on the week days, and on Friday and Saturday nights it was open until 2:30 am. When the office was closed the phone lines were diverted to one of the officer’s homes. If a call came in the officer would respond and the wife would listen to a radio or handheld radio at the house.

There was a seven digit number for the Sheriff’s Office. For City Fire a seven digit number was called that rang in on 8 phones; one at the Sheriff’s Office and the rest in different fire volunteers’ homes. When the call came in, all would pick up and listen to the call and then respond to the fire hall. The first fireman to reach the hall would turn on the siren. For the ambulance you would call a different seven digit number which ran into the Hospital, a nurse would take the call and page the ambulance.

In 1996 Meagher County Dispatch was updated to a Basic 9-1-1 system with 24/7 service.  9-1-1 became the emergency number to call for emergency help and Law enforcement; Fire and Ambulance were paged from a central paging and answering point.  

In 1998 Meagher County Dispatch implemented enhanced 9-1-1. This meant when you called 9-1-1 on a land line phone, dispatch would have a location the call was made from and a name registered to the phone number.

In 2006, with the help of a Homeland Security Grant and 9-1-1 funds, Meagher County 9-1-1 Center implemented Phase I & II wireless 9-1-1 to its existing phone system. This meant if you called in on 9-1-1 using your cell phone, a call back number would show up along with your G.P.S. location on a map. Dispatching Law Enforcement, Fire and Ambulance also entered the computer age with a new pc based radio and paging system.

In 2009, Meagher County 9-1-1 received over $100,000.00 in State 9-1-1 Grant money to upgrade its      9-1-1 phone and mapping systems. This state of the art system replaced the existing 9-1-1 phone system that had become obsolete.  The phones are pc based and integrated with an updated mapping program, giving dispatchers even greater capabilities to serve 9-1-1 callers and dispatch emergency services.