Frank Pope
The American 19th century was characterized by grand entrepreneurial schemes...a thirst to do what had never been done...and races to "get there first." The bid to link the U.S. and Europe by telegraph combined all three.
The Russian-American Telegraph Line (also called the Collins' Overland Telegraph, after the man who successfully gained support for the project from President Abraham Lincoln) was a $3 million dollar concept hatched in 1859. The line was to extend existing wire in California up through the Pacific Northwest, across Alaska (then known as Russian America), under the Bering Strait, across Siberian Russia and on past St. Petersburg to Europe. The risk of the venture was high; English entrepreneurs were attempting to build their own communication bridge between the Old World and America by laying an underwater cable across the Atlantic Ocean.
Though the obstacles to such a 10,000-mile-plus telegraph wire were formidable, Franklin Leonard Pope was more than equal to the task of identifying the best route. Pope, born in Massachusetts in 1840, had already distinguished himself as a clever and resourceful engineer, artist and inventor. As a boy, he earned his spending money by drawing sketches of locomotives and selling them to railroad engineers and firemen. Hired as a telegraph operator at age 17, he developed expertise in electrical engineering, then worked as an artist and writer for Scientific American, where he learned about the latest patents. He played a part in keeping war communications flowing for the Union during the Civil War, and became a major in the U.S. Army. He
Pope's expedition set out in late 1865, over-wintering in the Canadian interior. Temperatures plunged to 50 below at night. The dog team sunk out of sight in difficult snow, and was soon played out from the exertion of hauling a 500-pound sledge of baggage and equipment. Supplies grew short, with the thought of starvation never far off. The men at one point lived on a quarter salmon and two spoonfuls of flour per day.
Nevertheless, by autumn 1866, Pope had managed to survey and plot the entire North American route of the line.
The race to complete the line continued through the winter, with workers lighting fires to thaw the ground so they could dig pole holes. Wrote Western Union employee George Adams, "Building a telegraph line with only dogs and sleds for transportation in the frigid zone is not as much fun as it is cracked up to be."
By summer 1867, over 45 miles of line were completed in Russian America, telegraph stations were built, and thousands of poles were ready to be strung. All for naught; the British had completed the first transatlantic cable in July1866 and it had withstood a North Atlantic winter, making the Collins line obsolete before it was even finished.
But the grand Overland Telegraph race paved the way for America's purchase of Russian Alaska for $7 million in 1867. And Frank Pope went on to still greater accomplishments. He invented the railroad signal, worked as a patent attorney and edited magazines. And he invented the stock ticker--with a young business partner named Thomas Edison.
Engineering Genius--and Master of Disguise
In 1863, deadly riots broke out in New York City in protest of a law drafting men into the Union Army. The disturbances took on racial overtones, as thousands of Irish Catholics attacked free blacks living there. Dozens were killed and hooligans cut down telegraph lines to Boston, preventing critical war-time communications between the two cities. President Lincoln ordered that troops from Gettysburg be sent to quell the disorder.
In the meantime, Frank Pope was charged with finding a way to get the telegraph line up and running again. Pope disguised himself as a farm laborer, hiding his tools in a bag of oats. Under threat of attack by armed drunken rioters patrolling the lines, Pope worked by night making temporary splices to 15 miles of broken line. To deceive saboteurs, he strung the new wire out of sight, along bushes and low trees, and left pieces of the original line hanging uselessly from their poles. By daylight, Pope had successfully pieced together a temporary circuit to Boston.
About Frank Pope's Northwestern Blueberry Spread
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