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You may have noticed, but Long Line towers have returned to my blog after a month-long absence. I wrote about pausing my project after I ran out of photos to share! Fortunately, a recent trip supplied enough to round out the rest of the year. 

Most of us barely pause to think about the technology we use to communicate. Nevertheless, it has a dramatic influence on our lives. Before cell phones were ubiquitous, AT&T’s Long Lines network enabled long-distance communication. It worked by relaying a baton of microwaves from central office to central office through a series of line-of-sight towers and antennae.

All in all, AT&T’s Long Lines network was revolutionary in expanding long-distance communications, improving call quality, and building a backbone for national defense. Unfortunately, the network’s utility ended once geostationary satellites and improvements in fiberoptic technology came to market. 

AT&T shut the system down after competitors introduced digital networks, but most of its towers remain standing. I’ve been curious about them since I was a kid. As an adult, the best sources I’ve found seem to show that more than a hundred of them dotted Indiana at the program’s peak! 

I’d made it to twenty-six sites before I ran out of photos. Fortunately, Memorial Day weekend was the perfect opportunity to add to my collection. Over two days and twenty-seven counties, my mom and I went to a whopping twenty-eight Long Line towers and offices! Including retakes, the trip bumped my total up to fifty-two. 

I publish a quick blog post about a Long Line tower every Sunday. They go over the basics, like when it was built, how tall it is, where it relayed a signal, and what it’s used for today. I’ve already run a couple new ones, but twenty-six more should last until the end of the year. I hope to avoid another service interruption, so I’m already planning where to go next. The closest site is the central office in Fort Wayne, but I can go there whenever.

The nearest tower looks to be near Martinsville. I wish I’d known that over Memorial Day- I was right in the area! Fortunately, my plant shuts down during the last week of June. I may be able to run down and knock out eight or nine in a day trip to Terre Haute, then use the extra time to write and update my Long Line map.

Speaking of, the Long Line Map just went through its biggest upgrade since I first made it. For starters, each of the fifty-two sites I’ve been to now has a picture to go along with its coordinates. In addition, I finally added the paths each signal followed as it was volleyed from tower to tower. I’m still not sure how the tower at Palmer fits into the puzzle, but I’ll update the map again once I find out. 

AT&T’s old Long Line towers are a niche interest, even more than courthouses or schoolhouses. That’s part of why I write about them! I wish there had been a source of information about them when I was a kid wondering about the weird-looking towers I saw on the way to my dad’s house. Now there is!