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| Officer's Quarters Ft. Whipple (1871) |
As 1873 dawned, the Weekly Arizona Miner lamented that Arizona was “about the only great geographical division of the Union that is not now connected with the Capital of said Union…by telegraph.” Indeed, Lt.-Gen. George R. Crook, the man in charge of fighting in the Indian Conflicts, requested that the War Department build a telegraph line from California into the Arizona Territory in 1871. However, by 1873, Crook had already made peace with the Apaches and the “Indian Wars,” as they were called were winding down. Yet the wiring of Arizona to the rest of civilization would still be of great benefit in case of conflict from Mexico and Arizona “would no longer be isolated,” the Miner observed.