Young Harvard man Wayne Cameron travels west and meets his destiny. There, he falls in with a brave group of Westerners struggling to fulfill a dangerous, desperate and thrilling dream - to carry through a thousand miles of dangerous wilderness a single strand of iron wire for a company called the Western Union. This wire will complete a telegraph line linking the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Along the way they will have to contend with Indians, a bleak winter and those against them. On this life changing journey Cameron also meets Kit Sunderlund and in doing so finds a place he wants to settle down in, should the wire reach Ft. Bridger at all.