Telegraph Links

Soldiers constructed Alaska's first telegraph, the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System, to connect widely separated U.S. Army posts during the Gold Rush era, and although built for military communication, it soon carried many more civilian than military messages. Congress appropriated funds in 1900, and Captain George C. Brunnell and Lieutenants William L. "Billy" Mitchell and George Gibbs oversaw construction of the 1,506 mile line from southcentral to interior and western Alaska. Crews completed the final connection south of Fairbanks on June 27, 1903, and messages traveled from Alaska over Canadian lines to Washington, D.C., before a later submarine cable linked Alaska and Seattle. Storms, heavy snow, frost heaves, high winds, and forest fires often disrupted service, so the Army placed men at forty mile intervals to operate and maintain the line, with each isolated station staffed by a repairman, two assistants, and a team of seven dogs. Soldiers were encouraged to hunt and trap but not to prospect, and the system aided commerce, safer travel between gold camps, and the flow of outside news until heavy traffic required a second line along some routes and radio technology made WAMCATS obsolete by the late 1920s.

Gakona, Alaska · United States