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<\/center>Okay, I’m stretching a little bit in order to make a Kingston Trio reference. So sue me. The title of this post should be “Where have all the antennas gone?” The photo above shows the AT&T communications tower atop the hill on 15th street in northeast Bismarck. The tower has been here far longer than I have…what’s changed is the equipment that’s hanging on it.<\/p>\nOriginally this tower had the big cone-shaped antennas that indicated that it was a microwave relay station. You can still see a tower decked out with these east of Dickinson, and I remember seeing another one between here and Fargo…but I’m not sure exactly where.<\/p>\n
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<\/center>This is what such a tower would normally look like. With fiber optic running everywhere and digital transmission replacing analog, I guess this type of thing is just unnecessary these days. That means that those Two Towers (sorry, Lord of the Rings reference) mentioned above may be retasked as well.<\/p>\nThe array of antennas that currently occupy this behemoth are cellular antennas. You can determine if a tower is a cellular phone tower by these telltale antenna arrays, often oriented in a triangular pattern. Since AT&T is trying to establish a cellular presence in Bismarck, and they apparently haven’t the need for microwave equipment on this tower, cellular antennas have magically replaced those big ol’ cones. I don’t know how quickly it happened, but I noticed it suddenly. Watching them swap that equipment out would have been somewhat entertaining.<\/p>\n
AT&T built a ton of these towers in the 1950s as part of the Long Lines<\/a> project. I don’t know if this particular tower was part of that project, or at least the original phase of it. I found a map of those microwave relay sites here<\/a> but I don’t have dates or other specific information to attach to this particular tower. Many of them don’t even belong to AT&T anymore…because of the logo on the side of the building I’m just assuming that this one still does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Okay, I’m stretching a little bit in order to make a Kingston Trio reference. So sue me. The title of this post should be “Where have all the antennas gone?” The photo above shows the AT&T communications tower atop the … Continue reading