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WENDOVER — Visitors normally drive to Wendover to gamble, see a concert, or maybe visit the historic airfield.
Chances are it's not to see a telephone pole.
However, there is one telephone pole in town that's unlike all the others. In fact, it’s unlike any other telephone pole in the country.
"Just digging out all the details has been awesome," said Heather Schubert. "We’re just so thrilled about this wonderful monument.”
Schubert and her two brothers came to Wendover this week from their homes in California just to see the telephone pole that stands in the parking lot of the Montego Bay Resort. That's because the pole marks the location where the first transcontinental phone lines connected.
Schubert's grandfather, Ralph Knudsen, spliced those final lines 100 years ago this week.
"Just to stop and look out at the desert and picture what it must have been like for our grandfather, I took a shot of all the telephones lines coming into Wendover," Schubert said. "I know those aren’t the original poles, but trying to picture my grandfather coming in and setting each one of those poles, it’s amazing."
Workers brought the poles across the west by wagon. They even slept in covered wagon.
When Knudsen and his crew made it to Wendover on June 17, 1914, Knudsen climbed the final pole to splice the lines, connecting the eastern United States and the western United States by phone for the first time.
"I'm just proud that he got to be the one who made the final splice," said Ernest Holly III, one of Knudsen’s grandsons. "He ended up on a postage stamp; that's very cool.”
The postage stamp depicting that historical moment is now a collector’s item, but for the most part history doesn't really remember Knudsen.
There were no official celebrations marking the 100th anniversary, so Knudsen's grandchildren and their spouses did it themselves. They brought a small, homemade marker to commemorate the day, as well as a poster marking the final splice.
"As I'm getting older, I'm thinking about that sort of thing because I know it's important to me now, and I think it's important to my kids too," said Rich Holly, another of Knudsen’s grandsons.
The three grandchildren say Knudsen probably knew what he was doing was important. However, they don’t think he could possibly grasp what a historical moment it was. Knudsen was only 24 years old at the time.
"It's just a very special thing,” Schubert said. “It’s very, very, very cool. And I think, just going forward in life, it will always be cool for our children and their children.”
“To me, this is a pilgrimage of sorts," Rich Holly said. "My mother would tell us the story about how 'Poppy' made that last splice, and it was really embedded in the family as we went through the years.”
For this family, at least, this historical moment will never be forgotten.
