Western Union Telegraph Expedition

The Russian–American Telegraph, also known as the Western Union Telegraph Expedition and the Collins Overland Telegraph, was a $3,000,000 (equivalent to $46.9 million in present-day terms) undertaking by the Western Union Telegraph Company in 1865–1867, to lay an electric telegraph line from San Francisco, California to Moscow, Russia.

The route was intended to travel from California via Oregon, Washington Territory, the Colony of British Columbia and Russian America, under the Bering Sea and across Siberia to Moscow, where lines would communicate with the rest of Europe. It was proposed as an alternate to long, deep underwater cables in the Atlantic.

Abandoned in 1867, the Russian–American Telegraph was considered an economic failure, but history now deems it a "successful failure" because of the many benefits the exploration brought to the regions that were traversed.

By 1861 the Western Union Telegraph Company had linked the eastern United States by electric telegraph all the way to San Francisco. The challenge then remained to connect North America with the rest of the world.

Working to meet that challenge was Cyrus West Field's Atlantic Telegraph Company, who in 1858 had laid the first undersea cable across the Atlantic Ocean. However, the cable had broken three weeks afterwards and additional attempts had thus far been unsuccessful.

Meanwhile, entrepreneur Perry Collins visited Russia and took note that it was making good progress extending its telegraph lines eastwards from Moscow over Siberia. Upon his return to the States, Collins approached Hiram Sibley, head of the Western Union Telegraph Company with the idea of an overland telegraph line that would run through the Northwestern states, the colony of British Columbia and Russian Alaska. Together, they worked on promoting the idea and obtained considerable support in the US, London and Russia.

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