Frank Milburn, Burlington inventor, go fed up with the quality, or, more specifically, the lack thereof, of his phone service.  So he enlisted the help of 50 or so prominent local citizens and took pictures such as this.  They ran in local papers, with such captions as "Fix these conditions so we can't photograph them."  It eventually worked, and phone service improved.

I think it's a great photo if for no other reason than it's irony. In 2005, this area, looking from Camp Ernst Road toward Oakbrook, has maybe a hundred businesses, and is four lanes wide. However, when it was originally taken, in the spring of 1948, it was a picture of an unimproved section of Burlington Pike, taken because it was a photo of a telephone pole not doing its job.