Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1908 — TALL TELEPHONE POLE. [ARTICLE]

TALL TELEPHONE POLE.

One In Washington 126 Feet High Is a Single Stick of Fir. One of the tallest telephone poles in the world is where the wires of tne Pacific States Telephone company cross the Chehalis river near Aberdeen, Wash. For some years past a pole 90 feet high waJ sufficient to keep the wires dear of river craft. But the increasing passage of ocean steamers made a higher pole necessary and a new one 126 feet high was set up. This pole is one single stick of Washington fir, 18 inches at the butt and eight Inches at the top. The pole weight 6,000 pounds. The stick was cut at a point 12 miles distant and towed down the .river, where it was erected by six men using a 12 horse-power hoisting engine. For mak’ng attachment to the pole and moving it a flveelghths inch steel cable was employed, run through ten inch steel blocks. The pole was set 12 feet in the ground and guyed with four steel stranded wires at the top, and also guyed about 40 feet from the top with four five-sixteenth inch stranded wires. The guys are fastened to dead men set In the ground to a depth of eight feet. These dead men are of cedar Bxß inches in section and seven feet long.