Message in a Wire

The Telegraph Building, standing for over a century, is the oldest building in the Delta area and the only remaining part of the original McCarty Telegraph Station. Local builder C. Schultz hand-hewed its logs, and the Fairbanks Daily News reported on September 14th, 1907, that they were "on three sides as smooth as though they had been planed." Its completion linked area residents to the gold fields and the rest of the nation, and the white paint on the ends of the logs identified the buildings as a telegraph station where messages could be sent and received. The Army Signal Corps, which operated WAMCATS, turned the telegraph system over to the Alaska Road Commission in 1925. A year later the War Department installed a 50-watt radio, and telephone lines soon replaced the telegraph. The station officially closed in 1929, but the Alaska Road Commission continued using the buildings while maintaining local roads and telephone lines. During World War II, the Army reclaimed McCarty Telegraph Station for military crews constructing the Big Delta Army Air Field, the Alcan Highway, and the wooden bridge across the Tanana River. After the war, the site served the community in several ways: the Telegraph Building was the Big Delta Post Office from 1947 through 1948, the Boy Scouts of America used the buildings for campouts in the 1950s, the U.S. Army Cold Weather and Mountain Training School used the Telegraph Building as a base camp and storage facility, and Alaska State Parks obtained the site in 1991. After restoration of the Telegraph Building in 1994, the Delta Historical Society created displays there. The Telegraph Building originally housed the telegraph office and also served as soldiers barracks, and The Daily Ripsaw, a publication of the Army Signal Corps, was printed there in 1911.

Big Delta, Alaska · United States