Ear: Telegraph

In the digital age, news travels worldwide in a matter of seconds. A snippet in The Daily Morning Astorian of Nov. 22, 1889, explains how difficult it could be back then to get news from the outside world:

“A word of praise is due (to) the faithful workers who keep up the telegraph line along the Columbia River. Oftentimes it is a tremendous task, and one occasioning considerable exposure and consequent danger.

“Though it is probably the most difficult line in the whole U.S. to keep up, by reason of the rough country it traverses, yet it is very seldom that the readers of The Astorian are left without their regular morning dispatches.

“The storm, for instance, last Sunday morning, leveled a good many wires, and interrupted telegraphic communication in a good many places, notably, to the north. Getting dispatches for an Astoria newspaper involves difficulties unknown in offices along a line that runs through a more thickly settled country, or along the line of a railroad.

“On more than one occasion Mr. Henderson has succeeded in taking a report when a less experienced operator would give up in despair. Instances have not been infrequent when he has had to work with a line that has had two inches of mud on top of it, being thus embedded in Clatsop’s sacred soil by some huge tree trunk or limb that had fallen upon it.

“In such cases, it is ‘like pulling teeth’ to make the line work.” (Image: Courier & Ives)