Derrigimlagh Bog: A Historical Gem on the Wild Atlantic Way
Derrigimlagh Bog, one of the Signature Discovery Points of the Wild Atlantic Way, is a uniquely beautiful area of blanket peat bog and lakes. This location is not only important for its rich and diverse wildlife and plant life but also as the scene of two significant events in international travel and communications history.
Marconi’s First Transatlantic Radio Signal in 1907
Over 100 years ago, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi established the world’s first permanent transatlantic radio station at Derrigimlagh. In October 1907, the first commercial transatlantic message was transmitted from here to Glace Bay, Newfoundland, Canada. The station was an impressive collection of buildings, employing several hundred people who helped transmit news across the ocean from 1907 to 1922. Although it was destroyed by fire during the Irish War of Independence, the foundations of the buildings and workers’ houses can still be seen today.
Alcock & Brown’s Crash Landing
Amazingly, this same remote and isolated location was also the site of the crash landing of John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown in 1919, during the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. They took off from Newfoundland 16 hours earlier on the morning of June 15, 1919. The spot is marked by a white memorial shaped like an airplane wing.
Today, visitors can explore a new walkway through the bog, marked by interactive information points that tell the fascinating history of this area. Viewing through the binocular-style information points, one can see the existing landscape overlaid with images of the view as it was in the early 20th century.