The transcontinental telegraph wire came through Salt Lake City in 1861, and immediately revolutionized communications. Information from Washington, D.C., or San Francisco that once took weeks or months to reach Utah now arrived in only a few minutes.

But the majority of the Utah settlements were north and south of Salt Lake City, and so the transcontinental line -- running generally east-west -- did little to improve communications within the territory. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints decided to build its own adjunct line, dubbed the Deseret Telegraph, linking communities to the north and south of Salt Lake. Construction on this line started in 1866.

Initially, Brigham Young asked that each telegraph station community send one or more young people to be trained on the telegraph. The Deseret telegraph system was never meant to make a

profit. Donations by church members helped to fund the telegraph.

Eliza Luella Stewart, the first telegraph operator at the Pipe Springs station, which opened in 1871, was only 16 years old. Other young women replaced her.

The telegraph line in this region ran from Toquerville, Utah, to Rockville (near Zion National Park), then to Pipe Spring, and on to Kanab, Utah, the end of the line. At Toquerville, it joined the main line to Salt Lake City. Pipe Spring has several of the original glass insulators and what is believed to be a section of the original wire used in the Deseret Telegraph system.