World-War-Ⅱ-era telephone line still in use in Upper Tanana Valley Alaska (2021)

I saw this IRL and did an actual double-take when I realized it was open-wire telephone (telltale conductor transposition pattern: <https://the-electric-orphanage.com/wp-open-wire-transpositio...>) and not an old railroad telegraph line like can be commonly found.

Honestly shocked that any of this is still standing. My pics: https://ibb.co/album/vhrp2x

See also:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Communications_System

- https://www.army.mil/article/282982/signal_corps_opens_commu...

“Beginning in the summer of 1942, the Signal Corps installed an open wire telephone line parallel to the Alaska-Canada Highway that was being constructed to connect military airfields and enhance the defense of the territory. Using mostly commercial crews, it was completed in just 15 months, despite requiring the setting of 95,00 poles in frozen ground and the stringing of 14,000 miles of wire.”

Pockets of frozen technology persist from time to time. As a kid (60 years ago) we had a wooden telephone with a cone on a hook and a speaking horn out the front. A large D battery inside the wooden box. You took down the cone and rattled the switchhook it hung from to get the operator's attention - your light would flash on her switch board. She'd ask, and plug your line into whoever you wanted to talk to.

In the 1960's long past the time that party lines and manual operators were supposed to be extinct. But, rural Iowa.

I'm a little skeptical that any actual wiring from this project is still in use to this day. Conditions are hard on this kind of infrastructure. Alaska has been pushing to modernize telecom infrastructure heavily for the last two decades, and now LEO, GEO, microwave, and fiber are delivering services to pretty much everywhere. On the other hand, I've seen a free public telephone in the middle of a village that has dial-tone, presumably even in the middle of winter at temperatures past -40. I can absolutely believe that if there is a pair of wires that get the job done, they could still be in use for something like that.

20 years ago I stumbled across an abandoned telegraph line that was used to connect Seward to Anchorage. There were poles with intact glass insulators in some places. It wasn't far off the highway, and I encountered someone else at the time who told me it was an unofficial trail used by locals. So I wouldn't be surprised if someone took the insulators for whatever reason in the meantime.

I think people forget just how remote those sections of the world were then. Building a highway and telephone line in/to Alaska then would be like building one across Antarctica today.

Great example of why we need goverment doing social things for free for citizens