Why the retro atmosphere to the town Will visits in Lost in Space “Return from Outer Space” (1965)?

Question

In the first season episode of Lost in Space (1965) "Return from Outer Space", Will is teleported to Earth, ending up in a town in Vermont. It has a feel very like Bedford Falls in "It's a Wonderful Life" - very 1930s when Will didn't travel through time (should be 1997, 32 years into the future from the show's 1965 production date). We know he didn't travel through time because the citizens know of the Jupiter 2's launch and disappearance.

For example, we see telephones such as the "candlestick"

and the wall phone

which were completely outdated by 1965, and should be nothing more than museum pieces by 1997, yet were perfectly normal to their users. Isn't this an anachronism? Was it intended to depict the town as in some way "backward", despite being up-to-date on current events? Was it just a production economy by borrowing sets/props from some other production which really was set in an earlier time?

Answer 1

The plot required him to be unable to contact Alpha Control, and this was more explicable if he was transported to a backward "hick" town out in the middle of nowhere.

Clearly the scriptwriters wanted Will to return to small-town America rather than the Big City, and perhaps laid on the quaintness a bit thicker than they really needed to