Historical Marker · No. 91
Telegraph Hill
San Francisco, San Francisco County · California
Erected by California Historical Society, 1961
The signal station's owners, Sweeny and Baugh, printed its code as a broadside so anyone in town could read the arms on the pole, and the town learned it. Both arms straight out meant a sidewheel steamer, the mail boat with letters from home. The story goes that when an actor in The Hunchback flung out his arms and asked what this meant, a voice from the audience answered, a sidewheel steamer. The bronze, cast twice for visits of the liner Canberra, spells indentified and obselete. No state plaque stands here.
What the plaque says
During Gold Rush days a look-out stationed in a structure on this spot observed and signalled the arrival of incoming vessels. By adjusting movable arms high on a tall pole and by hoisting national colors, he indentified the nature of the ship arriving and alerted the town below. After four years, in 1853, this novel signalling system became obselete through use of electrical telegraph. This monument erected by California Historical Society July 20, 1961, on the occasion of the arrival of "S.S.Canberra" of the P & O Steam Navigation Company Original plaque replaced by the Coit Tower Preservation Fund, and rededicated January 31, 1993 on the arrival of "S.S.Canberra", World Cruise 1993
Where it stands
37.80305, -122.40612 · Directions