On July 15, 1874, the U.S. terminus of the first direct, high-speed, fully submerged transatlantic telegraph cable was laid at Rye Beach, N.H. When the 3,000-mile cable was made functional the following year, it connected Rye Beach to Balinskelligs Bay, in County Kerry, Ireland.
Because it was the first such cable to terminate on U.S. soil rather than in Canada, its placement at Rye Beach attracted national attention, with stories about it appearing in both Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Europe and America could now share information in a matter of seconds rather than weeks.
The cable remained in service until the 1950s and is still there, lying on a stretch of beach known as the Sunken Forest and visible only during exceptionally low tides.
N.H. Historical Society