Invented by Samuel F. B. Morse in the 1830s, the telegraph was already maturing as a communication tool when it became a key component to communication in Wyoming in the 1860s. From the early days of settlement and through the railroad period, Wyomingites relied on it for long-distance communications.
The first transcontinental telegraph line passed through central Wyoming along the route of the Oregon-California trail in 1861. Later, in May 1869, the main transcontinental telegraph line was shifted to the south, along the route of the Union Pacific Railroad.
The telegraph signaled the demise of previous methods of communication. Before then, a message could be delivered only as fast as a horse could run or a ship could sail. A message took 45 days by ship from New York to San Francisco; more than 20 days by overland stagecoach from St. Louis to San Francisco. The Pony Express took 11 days from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.
Just before the start of the Civil War, Congress offered a subsidy to any company agreeing to build the transcontinental telegraph. Western Union, submitted a bid for $40,000 to build the line. In the winter of 1860-61, Edward Creighton surveyed the route of the proposed transcontinental line between Omaha and California to be built with the financial support of Western Union. He dug the first post hole for the telegraph line on July 2, 1861. (Creighton and his brother John were prominent Omaha merchants for whom their endowed local university still bears their name).
Creighton, who became during the construction phase, Western Union’s general agent, organized two teams of builders, one to work on the line from the West, the other from the East. The line reached Fort Laramie from the east on August 5, 1861. On October 18, 1861, the workers of the one subcontractor, the Overland Telegraph Co., reached Salt Lake City, completing the eastern section of the line. The western section, shorter but covering more difficult terrain, was finished by the Pacific Telegraph Co another subcontractor, on October 24.
Some 27,000 poles were set every 75 yards over 1,086 miles from Fort Kearny, Nebraska, to Fort Churchill, Calif., in the four months it took for construction. Poles were to be found “en route” (not so easily accomplished on the treeless plains). Western end materials were shipped around Cape Horn to San Francisco.
Furnishing the poles for a short stretch of the Wyoming segment led to the first civil lawsuit ever decided by the Wyoming Supreme Court—the case of Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Monseau (finally, reaching the territory’s highest court in 1870). Monseau had contracted to furnish 754 telegraph poles at $2.50 each. The company claimed the man who made the deal with Monseau was not authorized to do it on the company’s behalf. The three-member Supreme Court upheld the lower court ruling in Monseau’s favor. (E. P. Johnson, for whom Johnson County would be named, represented Monseau).
Galvanized iron wire “of the best quality” and insulators, iron holders embedded in glass and enclosed in wooden forms, kept the wires off the ground. Batteries, needed to power the signal, were shipped as powder in containers with electrodes. Water was added later to bring the batteries to charge.
Stations were located every 20 miles because batteries were usually only strong enough to relay to the next station. Some stations had once served (or was serving) the overland stagelines. The next telegrapher sent off to the next station, etc., from these “relay stations.” Cost to send a message: $7 for 10 words, seemingly expensive, but cheaper and quicker than the Pony Express. Once the telegraph connected the United States the Pony Express discontinued service.
Upstaged as a technological and engineering wonder by the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, the telegraph line was completed on Oct. 24, 1861, to national acclaim. It was just a few months after the onset of the Civil War that Stephen J. Field, Chief Justice of California and brother of Atlantic cable promoter Cyrus Field, sent a message to Abraham Lincoln assuring him of California’s loyalty to the Union and promising that the telegraph line would “be the means of strengthening the attachment which binds both the East and the West to the Union.”
Through the Civil War years, Western Union, builders of the transcontinental line, continued to grow and prosper. By 1866 the Western Union monopoly controlled a staggering 90% of the telegraph traffic in the United States. Congress tried to nationalize the telegraph and place it under the post office, but failed.
Western Union was challenged eventually by the telephone. By about 1890 telephone engineers expanded the range of audible conversations to a few hundred miles, culminating in the establishment of transcontinental telephone service in 1915.
That, combined with airmail service, radio communication, and teletypes in the 1920s and 1930s, brought about the telegraph’s decline. By 1990, all that remained of the once-dominant monopoly was its money transfer services. The internet even furthered its decline.
(This article, intended for the syndicated column, Buffalo Bones: Stories from Wyoming’s Past, originated with a draft researched and written in 1991, but mislaid until it was uncovered in a file by Phil Roberts earlier this year).