First California overland telegraph insulator found

[Newspaper]

Publication: The San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco, CA, United States
vol. 104, no. 10, p. 32; Magazine Section, col. 5-7

Insulator From First

Overland Circuit Is

Found in the Sierra

Iron hook, insulated in oak

block, on which the first telegraph

line across the Sierra was hung.

Harold T. Power Has Relic

of First Telegraph

in California

RECALLING the days when the telegraph was new in California, an insulation of the first over­land circuit was recently found on a spruce tree near Forest Hill, in Placer county, by Harold T. Power.

This old-style “hanger” of the wire that brought the Civil War news into the State in the sixties is shown in the accompanying illustration. It consists of a chunk of solid oak, six inches thick, into which a cast iron double hook is set with gutta percha insulation. The block was nailed to the trunk of the tree with three inches thick, wrought-iron nails, which were taken out in an excellent state of preservation in spite of their three score years of service.

According to F. H. Lamb of the Western Union Company, to whom Power showed the insulation and de­scribed the location in which it was found, it is a part of the line between Placerville and Dutch Flat, which was acquired by the Western Union in 1860 from the California State Telegraph Company. The line was extended by the Western Union to Salt Lake in 1861, where it was tied with Eastern wire on October 6th of that year.

Lamb thinks that the part of the line from which this insulation comes was originally constructed by the Alta Telegraph Company, which had a line into Virginia City in the late fifties. In any event, he says, it was part of the first overland circuit which brought Civil War news into California.

At that time, when the telegraph was still a novelty, and interest ran high in the war news of the day. it was the custom of the miners to con­gregate in the telegraph office in the evening and listen to the operator while he read off the news on its way to San Francisco. So the mining camps scooped the city on the big Eastern stories.