Key Facts
- Project cost
- $3,000,000 (~$63.1 million today)
- Duration
- 1865–1867 (approx. 2 years)
- Planned route length
- San Francisco to Moscow via Bering Strait
- Construction halted at
- Fort Stager, confluence of Kispyap and Skeena rivers
- Canadian section sold
- New Westminster to Cariboo, bought by Canadian Government in 1880
Strategic Narrative Overview
Construction began in 1865 across multiple fronts simultaneously, with survey and construction parties entering British Columbia and Russian America. Workers endured harsh wilderness conditions while laying wire through remote terrain. Progress in Siberia proved far slower and more difficult than planners had anticipated. Meanwhile, Cyrus West Field's team was making renewed efforts to complete a permanent transatlantic cable, which would directly compete with the overland route's commercial rationale.
01 / The Origins
By the mid-1860s, reliable transatlantic telegraph communication remained elusive due to the difficulty of laying deep-sea cables across the Atlantic. Western Union proposed an overland and shallow-water alternative: a telegraph line running from San Francisco north through Oregon, Washington Territory, British Columbia, and Russian America, crossing the relatively narrow Bering Strait underwater into Siberia, and then spanning the Eurasian continent to Moscow, where it would connect with European networks.
03 / The Outcome
When Field's transatlantic cable was successfully completed in 1866, the economic justification for the far longer overland route collapsed. Western Union halted the expedition in 1867, with construction ending at Fort Stager in British Columbia. The completed Canadian section was eventually purchased by the Canadian Government in 1880. Despite its commercial failure, the expedition yielded scientific and geographic knowledge of the traversed regions that was widely considered valuable.