After three days of trenching and laying cable through the Valdez tidal flats, in the early morning hours of September 29th 1904, the U.S. Army Transport Burnside began laying 650 miles of cable from Valdez to the southeast community of Sitka.

The steamer was successful in its task of laying the cable, which would cut communication costs from Alaska to the Lower 48 in half. 

The Burnside would continue to lay cable through the years following and also spent the next two decades maintaining those cables in the Pacific.

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