The Mexican Telegraph Company_The Zimmermann Telegram

The cable at the center of the story was already thirty-six years old in 1917. It was laid in 1881 for the Mexican Telegraph Company by the ships Dacia and International, with the cable itself made by the India Rubber, Gutta Percha and Telegraph Works. It ran 738 nautical miles from Galveston by way of Tampico to Vera Cruz. In 1882 it was joined to the new cable of the Central and South American Telegraph Company, which extended the system to Peru. The Galveston landing was thus one end of a line that reached much farther than Mexico.

What the plaque says

The Mexican Telegraph Company_The Zimmermann Telegram In 1917, with World War I at a stalemate, German military leaders adopted an aggressive strategy to strike any ships, even those of neutral nations, encountered in the Atlantic. As part of a campaign to hinder entry of the U.S. into the war, Germanys Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Arthur Zimmerman, signed off on a message to Mexican president Venustiano Carranza offering financial support and other considerations in return for Mexico's invasion of the American Southwest. Unable to hand deliver the message to Mexico's envoy, Germany sent it via transatlantic cables, but Britain had cut the German line, forcing a reliance on American cables. On Jan. 16, 1917, the Zimmerman telegram was transmitted from Germany to Washington, D.C., where the German Ambassador sent it on to Mexico City via the Mexican Telegraph Co. Trans-Gulf Cable, which entered Galveston near 19th Street beneath the seawall. A small building at 1819 Ave. O housed equipment which relayed the encoded telegram on to Mexico. British intelligence agents, monitoring messages via the U.S. Embassy in London, intercepted and deciphered the telegram. They handed a copy to the U.S.. Government on Feb 19. Upon reviewing the message, President Woodrow Wilson abandoned hopes of securing a peaceful conclusion to the war. He arranged for a copy of the telegram to be leaked to the press, thereby helping to accelerate the U.S. entrance into the war and the eventual victory for the allies. In the years following armistice in 1918, the Mexican Telegraph Co. merged with Western Union. The Galveston office remain open for 66 years closing in 1949. To prevent demolition, the telegraph company building was relocated in 1995 and then restored. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Moody Mansion — 0.7 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 0.8 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• The Strand — 1.2 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 1.4 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.

More markers nearby

• Site of the Home of Michael Branaman Menard — steps away
• Galveston Artillery Club — steps away
• Gail Borden, Jr. — steps away
• Holy Rosary Catholic Church — 0.2 mi