By Hank Nuwer
Uncle Sam’s Signal Corps made great strides between 1900 and 1908 in establishing communications throughout Alaska.
The main purpose of the lines was to keep various military command posts in touch with each other. But private citizens made ample use of opportunities for business and personal telegraphing.
The telegraph and cable line systems in the Alaska territory grew out of urgency for better communications arising from the discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1897. The first two stampedes of gold seekers were those landing in Skagway en route to Dawson City in Canada, and then to Nome on the west coast of Alaska
Congress thereupon appropriated funds to put in telegraph lines and cables to connect all military installations, as well as key population areas in Alaska. Some 72,000 poles were erected, many in the wilds by soldiers braving the elements.
An important event was an undersea cable begun in 1903 and concluded in 1904 from Seattle to Sitka and Juneau.
The military began adding radio antennas that sent electronic signals in 1907. Relay stations helped boost the radius limits, heralding the development of the Washington-Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System (WAMCATS).
By October,1908, the army signal service was well along in its goal to extend a wireless system in key parts of Alaska, connecting, for example, Circle, Eagle, Fairbanks, Gibbon and Nome, according to the Seward Gateway of the day.
Nonetheless, many scattered parts of the Interior still relied on telegraph lines. These lines often had to be repaired due to Alaska’s unforgiving weather.
In November of 1908, brief news articles reported the death of U.S. Signal Corps Private William R. Bonney. He was stationed at the lonely Minto outpost in Central Alaska’s Interior.
It took some time to piece together how Bonney, the son of Portuguese immigrants who settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, came to his end on November 19, 1908.
First reports had his middle initial wrong, giving his parents a few days of faint hope until General Allen, chief of the U.S. signal corps, confirmed that the dead man was their son.
At first, General Bonney thought the youth had died on a hunting trip. His superiors had granted permission for such a hunt so long as Bonney accompanied an experienced hunter to pursue game.
Those on duty in remote, Alaska, frequently replenished their cache of food with game and wild fowl.
Bonney’s body was located about eight miles from Minto.
Not until December 2, 1908, did The Daily Alaskan of Skagway report that Bonney and John F. Roberts, an 1883 immigrant from Portugal, had been trapped by a blizzard while repairing a telegraph line running along the Tolovana River, about 45 miles northwest of Fairbanks.
Bonney and Roberts waited too long to head for shelter. They were caught in the open as the temperature dropped fast and snow blinded them.
After a time, Bonney’s stamina played out. He lacked all power to trudge through the mounting snow and drifts.
Roberts helped him onto a sled and pushed ahead for his very life.
The next time the benumbed Roberts stopped, he found Bonney dead, the body already stiffening.
Roberts cut into the wire and messaged news of his plight and Bonney’s death to the nearest station.
A rescue party headed into the storm.
Roberts survived the ordeal. By 1910, according to U.S. Census records, he settled at Chandalar Lake, about 200 miles north of Fairbanks.
Bonney’s remains were shipped to his parents in Massachusetts. After a ceremony, they buried him at St. John the Baptist Cemetery in New Bedford.
William Bonney, about 26, was the second of three offspring of Flora Silveira Bonney and William M. Bonney to die young. Flora was a tailoress and her husband a silverplater. Both were in their late sixties in 1908.
Eventually, the army signal service perfected its system of wireless services.
The Fall River Daily Evening News in Massachusetts headlined Bonney’s death as “a reckless adventure.”
All Alaskans reading that judgment no doubt would have liked to give that ignorant headline writer a piece of their mind.
Signal workers like Bonney and Roberts were brave souls who did a great service for Alaskans in the Territory.
Hank Nuwer is a writer and adjunct professor for UAF based in Fairbanks.