How wooden utility poles are made

Samuel Morse tried burying his 1844 telegraph line, gave up, and strung it on poles.

stations: 5
things upstream: 1
raw source: 1
step from the ground: 1

The short version

Wooden utility poles come from tall, straight trees, most often southern yellow pine in the United States. The logs are peeled, dried, trimmed and drilled for hardware, then loaded into a pressure cylinder where preservative is forced deep into the wood. The treated poles are stacked for shipping.

Fell the straight trees

Crews choose long straight trunks, and those are cut and hauled to the pole yard.

Goes in
Timber
Peel and trim

Bark is shaved off and the pole is trimmed to a smooth taper.
Season the wood

Poles are stacked to dry in air or in a heated chamber, because wet wood will not take up preservative.
Bore and brand

Holes are drilled for crossarms and bolts before treatment, so preservative reaches the bare wood inside them. A brand burned into the butt records the species and class.
Force in preservative

Poles are sealed inside a long steel cylinder and the preservative is pushed in under pressure. It protects the wood from rot, fungi and insects. Creosote was traditional, and pentachlorophenol, copper naphthenate and borates are now common.

End of the lineUtility pole

Worth repeating

The standard utility pole in the United States is about 35 feet tall and is buried about 6 feet in the ground.
In 1844, Congress granted Samuel Morse $30,000 to build a 40-mile telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington.
To carry that line, Morse advertised in a Washington newspaper for 700 straight chestnut posts with the bark on.