What the Heck Is a Wamcats

What the Heck Is a Wamcats

Contributed by Col Suellyn Wright Novak

What the Heck Is a Wamcats? Glad you asked! That was the Washington Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System, linking the far-flung weather, telegraph and Army posts to Headquarters and ultimately to Washington DC. The system was authorized by Congress on May 26, 1900. Initially it connects Fort Liscum in Valdez to other forts along the Yukon River: Fort Egbert at Eagle City (later Eagle), Fort Gibbon at Tanana, and St. Michael on the Bering Sea coast. A submarine cable would link Seattle with Valdez. Prior to this modern marvel, communications were by ship then transferred to dog teams. Prior to WAMCATS, to send a message from interior Alaska to our nation's capital, and have a reply in hand, had taken up to one year, as it went by dog sled then by ship around the treacherous Cape Horn, with a similar return path.

Captain Charles S. Farnsworth spearheaded the WACATS effort with Fort Egbert as headquarters. But it was Lt Billy Mitchell (yes, the later Brigadier General Mitchell, the airpower advocate) who completed the 1,497 -mile-long line. While wire communications were possible in Fort Egbert by 1900, the route had previously traveled through Canada. General Adolphus Greeley (yes, the same explorer rescued by the Revenue Cutter Bear) ordered LT Mitchell to continue the wire southward through American soil. Mitchell reasoned the US Army Signal Corps could learn much from the local Alaska Natives (proper dress, building snowshoes and handling dog teams), so the soldiers could build year-round. They brought in supplies and moved telegraph poles in the winter, so they were ready to build at breakup. This system allowed his team to build from Eagle to Valdez in record time, completing it by June 1903.

Mitchell nest built the WAMCATS line westward from Eagle toward Fairbanks. He completed the work ahead of schedule. This line was completed on June 29,1903, by which time Mitchell and his dog team had logged over 2,000 miles.

Upon WAMCATS completion, the entire system consisted of 2,079 miles of cable. 1,439 miles of landlines, and the wireless system of 107 miles, for a grand total of 3,625 miles. Through mountains, bogs with blood-draining mosquitoes, tundra and permafrost, high heat and blood-freezing cold these overworked and underpaid soldiers persevered to unite first Alaska and then the nation. Upon completion, maintaining this vast system chewed up men, animals, and equipment. Teams of soldiers, composed of one signalman and two infantry soldiers, were stationed at one room log cabins, located every 40 miles, with relief cabins interspaced between those housing the repair crews. These lonely soldiers fought monotony, severe heat and cold, danger, wind, wildfires, vandalism, mosquitoes and other flying pests, as well as rugged terrain.

WAMCATS was renamed the Alaska Communications System (ACS) in 1936. The US Army provided all military, commercial, and civilian communication for Alaska until 1962 when the system was sold to the US Air Force, who seven years later sold it to RCA ALASCOM.