FIRST POWER LINES ACROSS KERR COUNTY By Joseph Luther Submitted to the Kerrville Daily Time 6.10.2010 Power lines across Kerr County are the subject of much heated discussion today. Most recently, these towers and lines were placed through scenic and historic Bandera Pass. Other lines are under consideration that would follow the I-10 right of way through Kerr County. Lest you think that this development is of recent imposition, the fact is that the first telegraph lines were erected in Kerr County in February 1876 – by the U.S. Army – more than 100 years ago. A person can still see relics of old telegraph poles along the area’s back roads. The telegraph was slow to come to Kerrville. In 1839, Samuel F.B. Morse tendered an offer to the Republic of Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar of “the use of the Electro Magnetic Telegraph to this Republic.” The Republic of Texas failed to accept the offer from Morse to give his new invention to this new nation. Morse, receiving no reply to his offer, withdrew it in a letter to Governor Sam Houston in 1860. His model instrument is kept in the State Archives Building at Austin. Texas was not connected with the outside world by telegraph until 1854. That year, the Texas Telegraph Company was chartered by the Secretary of State. The line entered Texas at Marshall, from New Orleans. Lines were soon extended to Houston, by the Texas and Red River Telegraph Company. On January 15, 1856, the Texas and New Orleans Telegraph Company was chartered and began construction of lines from Galveston to San Antonio and Austin. The Western Union Telegraph Company began operating in Texas in 1866. By 1874 Western Union owned eighty-nine of the 105 telegraph offices statewide. At the time telegrams cost a quarter for distances under twenty-five miles. In 1874, a bill was passed in Congress authoring the secretary of war to construct and operate telegraph lines between various military posts on the Texas frontier with district headquarters in San Antonio. The stated objective was “the protection of frontier settlements.” The 1,218.76 mile military telegraph line linking the San Antonio posts with other army reservations was completed in 1876. The telegraph line consisted of Johnson (English) No. 9 galvanized wire, 4 ½ inch Kenosha insulators or screw glass, and 20 foot by 4 ½ inch cedar poles. Lightning rods were installed every 5th pole in the open country of the Hill Country. The army’s telegraph line was constructed across Kerr County in February 1876 by twenty soldiers of the 10th Infantry under the immediate command of 2nd Lt. H.B. Chamberlain of Fort McKavett. The village of Telegraph, near Junction, was named for the telegraph poles cut to support communication lines to early United States Army forts. Where post holes were impossible, wires were strung often from treetop to treetop. When contractors ran short of glass insulators for the poles, cow horns were substituted. One old telegraph bar, from early day Kerrville, remains in place in a tall cypress tree above the Lemos Street Bridge – east side. Look up at it when you cross the bridge. Poles and wires have been part of our landscape for more than a century. They just seem to be getting a lot bigger as does the controversy. RESOURCES Ellis, L. Tuffly. “Lieutenant L.W. Greely’s Report on the Installation of Military Telegraph Lines in Texas, 1875-1876.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Volume 69, Page 66. Galveston News, “State News – Kerr County,” 22 June 1877. Dillon, C.H. "The Arrival of the Telegraph in Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Volume 64, Page 200. Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "Telegraph Service in Texas" tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/TT/egt1.html (accessed June 9, 2010).
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 19:21:37 +0000
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