Crittenden and Churchill, across the Sierra Nevada Mountains to
Placerville and San Francisco. Mr. Edward Creighton, who had already
surveyed the proposed route, and was convinced of the feasibility of
maintaining a line over it, was appointed superintendent of
construction.

The Company was organized April 17th, 1862, after which time nearly all
the wire, insulators, and other material had to be manufactured before
the construction of the line could be proceeded with. The reader can
judge of the extent of the preparations required for setting up two
thousand miles of telegraph through a wilderness inhabited only by
Indians and wild beasts, and a part of which was a desert. The materials
and tools were taken to Omaha, Kansas, at which point everything
necessary for the enterprise was gathered in readiness to start
westward.

Of the force employed on the Pacific side we have no knowledge; but for
the line from Omaha to Salt Lake City, Mr. Creighton had four hundred
men, fitted out for a hard campaign, with a rifle and navy-revolver for
each man, and with the necessary provisions, including one hundred head
of cattle for beef, to be driven with the train and killed as needed.
For the transportation of the material and the supplies for this army of
workmen, five hundred oxen and mules and over one hundred wagons were
purchased by the Company; and these not proving sufficient, other
transportation was hired, making the total number of beasts of burden
seven hundred oxen and one hundred pair of mules.

The first pole was set up on the 4th of July, 1862, and the line was
completed to Salt Lake on the 18th of October following,--the California
party reaching the same point six days later. The work proceeded at the
rate of about ten miles per day.

The whole line is upon poles,--it being thought best to cross the rivers
in this manner rather than by means of submarine cables. The country is
for the most part bare of wood; the longest distance, however, that
timber had to be drawn in one stretch was two hundred and forty miles.
The poles are of large size, and stand eighty to the mile, more than
half of red cedar, the remainder mostly pine. On the highest mountains,
where the snow accumulates to a great depth during the winter, they are
of extra size, and sufficiently tall to keep the wires above the deepest
snow; they are also placed close enough together to prevent the wire
being broken by an accumulation of snow and sleet