“Hot Line” to Europe

A U.S. Navy radio station at Otter Cliffs was the most important World War I facility for receiving transatlantic messages, including the first bulletin about the armistice. Wealthy island resident and inventor Alessandro Fabbri built the station and offered it to the federal government in exchange for a commission as its commanding officer. With its isolated site and clear span across the ocean, Otter Cliffs became a major link in the "hot line" between President Wilson and General John Pershing in Europe. The station remained in service into the 1930s, when John D. Rockefeller Jr. successfully lobbied to move the facility to the Schoodic Peninsula so he could extend the Ocean Drive section of Park Loop Road.

Bar Harbor, Maine · United States