Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T17:14:54.344Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Connecting Alaska: The Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

David Eric Jessup
Affiliation:
University of Washington

Extract

In response to the Klondike gold rush, the U.S. Army established isolated forts throughout Alaska. Between 1900 and 1905, the Signal Corps connected those posts with each other and with the contiguous United States by means of the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System (WAMCATS). A significant logistical and technological achievement, the system of thousands of miles of suspended landlines and underwater cable included the first successful long-distance radio operation in the world. The first physical link between the United States and Alaska, the telegraph was also the first major contribution to Alaskan infrastructure provided by the federal government, marking the beginning of the government's central role in the development of Alaska.

Type
Essays
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cole, Terrence, “Some, City of the Golden Beaches” (Anchorage, 1984), 122–23.Google Scholar

2 Nichols, Jeannette Paddock, Alaska: A History of Its Administration, Exploitation, and Industrial Development during Its First Half Century under the Rule of the United States (Cleveland, OH, 1924), 11.Google Scholar

3 Cole, Terrence, “The History of a History: The Making of Jeannette Paddock Nichols's Alaska,” Pacific Norrthwest Quarterly 77 (Oct. 1986): 130–38,Google Scholar quote on 131.

4 Dethloff, Henry C., Americans and tree Enterprise (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979), 127.Google Scholar

5 Thompson, Robert Luther, Wiring a Continent: The History of the Telegraph Industry in the United States 1832-1866 (Princeton, 1947), 351.Google Scholar

6 John, Richard R., Spreading the News: The American Postal System from tranklin to Morse (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 8789,Google Scholar quote on 88.

7 Taylor, George Rogers, The Transportation Resolution, 1815-1860 (New York, 1951).Google Scholar

8 Gandall, Matt, “Collins' Colossal Gamble,” Westirays 74 (Oct. 1982): 4546;Google ScholarSexton, Tom, “The Images of Charles H. Ryder,” The Alaska journal 12 (Summer 1982): 3233Google Scholar.

9 , Gandall, “Collins' Colossal Gamble,” 75; see alsoGoogle ScholarDwyer, John B., To Wire the World: Perry M. Collins and the North Pacific Telegraph Expedition (W'estport, CT, 2001); andGoogle ScholarNeering, Rosemary, Continental Dash: The Russian-American Telegraph (Granges, BC, 1989)Google Scholar.

10 The US. Army in Alaska, 172D Infantry Brigade Pamphlet No. 360–5 (May 1976): 20.

11 Army in Alaska, 21; Nielson, Jonathan M., Armed Tones on a Northem Frontier: The Military in Alaska's History, 1867-1987 (New York, 1988), 2930Google Scholar.

12 Army in Alaska, 22-26.

13 Army in Alaska, 32. The border dispute was not settled until 1903.

14 , Nielson, Armed Forces, 67.Google Scholar

15 Army in Alaska, 45.

16 , Nielson. Armed Forces, 65.Google Scholar

17 Army in Alaska, 28.

18 Ibid., 44.

19 U.S. Statutes at Large, vol. 23, 48th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC, 1885), 2428.Google Scholar

20 , Nielson, Armed Forces, 68.Google Scholar

21 Army in Alaska, 47.

22 Woodman, Lyman L., Duty Station Northwest: The U.S. Army in Alaska and Western Canada, 1867-1987 (Anchorage, 1996), 1:197.Google Scholar

23 See, for example: Ellis, L.T., “Lieutenant A.W. Greely's Report on the Installation or Military Telegraph Lines in Texas, 1875–1876,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 69 (July 1965): 6687,Google Scholar repr. in Military Signal Communications, vol. 1, ed. Scheips, Paul J. (New York, 1980)Google Scholar.

24 , Woodman, Duty Station Northwest, 1:197.Google Scholar

25 U.S. Statutes at large, 56th Cong. 1st sess. (Washington, 1901), 31:206.Google Scholar

26 U.S. Department of th e Interior, Annual Report, 1898,Google Scholar and Miscellaneous Report, 224-25.

27 U.S. War Department, Annual Report, 1898, 875,Google Scholar repr. in , Scheips, Military Signal Communications, vol. 1; Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer, 1900, 34Google Scholar [Hereafter CSO-AR] CSO-AR, 1902, 52-54; CSO-AR, 1905, 228-29.

28 Raines, Rebecca Robbins, Getting the Message Through: A branch History of the U.S Army Signal Corps (Washington, 1996), 106–08.Google Scholar

29 CSO-AR, 1901,9,37.

30 , Woodman, Duty Station Northwest, 1:227.Google Scholar

31 CSO-AR, 1902, 5.

32 CSO-AR, 1902, 5-6; , Woodman, Duty Station Northwest, 1:207Google Scholar.

33 Jenne, Theron L. and Mitchell, Harry R., “Militar y Long-Lines Communication in Alaska, 1900-1976” in Telecommunications in Alaska, ed. Walp, Robert M. (Honolulu, 1982), 14Google Scholar; CSO AR, 1902, 6.

34 CSO-AR, 1902, 48.

35 CSO-AR, 1902,4.

36 CSO-AR, 1901, 8-9; , Woodman, Duty Station Northwest, 1:206Google Scholar.

37 Jaunal, Jack W., “Bringing Ft. Kgbert to the ‘Outside’”, Periodical: The journal of the Council on America's Military Vast 14 (July 1983): 23.Google Scholar

38 CSO-AR, 1901, 8-9; CSO-AR, 1902, 4; Coates, Ken S. and Morrison, William R., Land of the Midnight Sun: A History of the Yukon (Montreal, 2005), 172Google Scholar; see also Miller, Bill, Wires in the Wilderness: The Story of the Yukon Telegraph (Surrey, BC, 2004)Google Scholar.

39 CSO-AR, 1904, 9.

40 CSO-AR, 1901, 38.

42 CSO-AR, 1902, 7; Society of Wireless Pioneers, Sparks Journal 7: Wamcats Edition (June 21, 1985): 66.

43 CSO-AR, 1902, 48; CSO-AR, 1904, 11.

44 CSO-AR, 1904, 11-12. General Greely added that these masts were “the highest ever erected on the Pacific coast” (12).

45 See Chadbourne, H. Lincoln, “Leonard D. Wildman and the First Alaskan Radio (Safety Harbor-St. Michael),” 1984,Google Scholar typescript available in the Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Chadbourne offers considerable information on the life and career of Wildman, as well as illustrated descriptions of the technical aspects of his wireless system.

46 CSO-AR, 1904, 11-12; , Woodman, Duty Station Northwest, 1:237.Google Scholar There is some confusion over the date of the completion of the Norton Sound wireless. Several sources, including CSO-AR, 1905, 216, give the date as August 1903; A. W Greely seems to confirm this date in later writings: see Handbook of Alaska: Its Resources, Products, and Attractions (New York, 1909), 253Google Scholar; Chadbourne opts for August 1904, attributing the common mistake to the fact that the completion of the system was reported in the annual report for fiscal year 1904, which ostensibly covered progress only through June of that year (in “Leonard D. Wildman” 94); Rebecca Robbins Raines, in her exhaustive history of the Signal Corps, also prefers the 1904 date (Getting the Message Through, 116-17, fn 100).

47 Sean , Reid, “Telegraph…A Key to Our Past,” Alascom Spectrum 4 (July 1983): 7.Google Scholar

48 , Jenne and , Mitchell, “Military Long-Lines,” 1415.Google Scholar

49 CSO-AR, 1904, 12.

50 San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 3, 1905.Google Scholar

51 Army in Alaska, 49; CSO-AR, 1901, 4145.Google Scholar

52 CSO-AR, 1901,38.

53 Webb, Melody, “Billy Mitchell and the Alaska Telegraph,” American History Illustrated 20 (Jan. 1986): 23.Google Scholar

54 Mitchell, William L., The Opening of Alaska (repr. Anchorage, 1982), 1.Google Scholar

55 , Mitchell, Opening of Alaska, 23, 37.Google Scholar

56 , Webb, “Billy Mitchell,” 24.Google Scholar

57 CSO-AR, 1902, 9-10.

58 , Mitchell, Opening of Alaska, 92.Google Scholar

59 Mitchell, Captain William, “Building the Alaska Telegraph System,” National Geographic Magazine, Sept. 1904, 361.Google Scholar

60 CSO-AR, 1903, 3-4.

61 , Mitchell, Opening of Alaska, 100.Google Scholar

62 CSO-AR, 1902,9.

63 CSO-AR, 1903, 6-8; CSO-AR, 1904, 5-7.

64 CSO-AR, 1904, 7; , Woodman, Duty Station Northwest, 1:238Google Scholar.

65 , Reid, “Telegraph,” 7.Google Scholar

66 CSO-AR, 1904, 4.

67 “Cable Completed,” Valdez News, Oct. 8, 1904, p. 1.Google Scholar

68 “Amundson [sic] Navigates Northwest Passage,” New York Times, Dec. 7, 1905, p. 1.

69 , Nielson, Armed Forces, 71.Google Scholar

70 “Alaska Communication System 49th Anniversary Bulletin, 1949,” booklet produced for the ACS in Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

71 CSO-AR, 1905, 214-15. The isolation of telegraph operators was not unique to the North; see, for example, the description of Australian telegraph operations in the 1870s in Blainey, Geoffrey, The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History (Melbourne, 1968), 222–27Google Scholar.

72 CSO-AR, 1903, 5.

73 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Report of the Chief of the Weather Bureau, 19041905, 281.Google Scholar

74 Freitas, Helen de, “Nathalie Fairbank's Journey Down the Yukon River in 1905,” Polar Record 24 (Oct. 1988): 305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

75 CSO-AR, 1903, 5.

76 Sparks journal 7: WAMCATS Edition, 24.

77 , Webb,“Billy Mitchell,” 25Google Scholar; Army in Alaska, 53.

78 CSO-AR, 1905, 219. A quarter of commercial-tariff revenue from fiscal year 1905 went to parties other than the U.S. Treasury, including the Canadian government telegraph svstem and the White Pass and Yukon Railway Company. Once the “All-American” system was permanently in place, the cost of paying outside telegraph service providers was presumably eliminated.

79 CSO-AR, 1905, 216-17; Army in Alaska, 53.

80 Sparks Journal 7: Wamcats Edition, 64, 74.

81 , Raines, Getting the Message Through, 339.Google Scholar

82 , Jenne and , Mitchell, “Military Long-Lines,” 19.Google Scholar

83 Fitch, Edwin M., The Alaska Railroad (Washington, 1968).Google Scholar U.S. Department of Transportation report available in the Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Fitch also published the book, The Alaska Railroad (New York, 1967)Google Scholar.

84 As a part of the project, the Signal Corps supervised the construction of a telephone line alongside the highway. The job required 14,000 miles of wire and 95,000 telephone poles. Coates, Ken, North to Alaska (Fairbanks, 1992), 260;Google Scholar, Raines, Getting the Message Through, 288–89; see alsoGoogle Scholar Stanley L. Jackson, “Stringing Wire toward Tokyo: A Brief History of the Alaska Military Highway Telephone line,” Signal Corps Historical Section, Jan. 1944, typescript copy at U.S. Army Center for Military History, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C.

85 Greely estimated the total cost of the project in his 1909 Handbook of Alaska: “The Congressional appropriations for these lines aggregated $1,352,132, and about 51,000,000 additional was involved in the Army transportation used, and in the pay, clothing, and subsistence of the soldiers engaged in the construction, operation, and maintenance of the lines” (253).