When I was growing up, my family made countless trips from Muncie to Fort Wayne. To a kid stuck in the back seat, those seventy minutes felt endless! At least they did until we got to Warren and Zanesville, where a pair of tall steel towers loomed into view that bristled with strange fixtures that looked nothing like the typical radio or TV antennas. Years later, I found myself working in the shadow of one in Anderson. That daily view reignited a curiosity that had been quietly simmering for years!
As it turns out, the towers in Warren, Zanesville, and Anderson weren’t the only strange towers I’d seen. Throughout my childhood, my dad and I passed concrete structures with the same features on drives through Angola, LaGrange, and Goshen. I even spotted one later in Wauseon, Ohio! I’d filed them all away in the back of my mind until I learned the truth: the towers I’d spied were once part of AT&T’s Long Lines network. Once I made the connection, I couldn’t stop noticing them. Seeing Anderson’s from the parking lot at work became the spark that led me to start photographing all I could find here in the Hoosier state.
AT&T’s old Long Line network connected our phones with long-distance service across the continent. Most were built from about 1950 through the 1970s, but the old tower in Anderson appears to have been erected in 19661. Rising 345 feet2, it served as a hub of sorts by relaying a signal from a tower in Muncie, to another in Point Isabel, and yet another in Noblesville3. Today, the structure retains five of its fan-shaped KS-15676 horn antennae.
Once a crucial link for AT&T, Anderson’s old tower rises prominently above the west side of the city as a stark reminder of a bygone telecommunications era. Visible from many miles away, its skeletal frame cuts a striking figure against the sky! Unfortunately, its accouterments are largely obsolete after the advent of fiber optics and satellites. A successor to AT&T sold most of the old Long Line towers around 2000, but Anderson’s tower remains part of the company’s cell service network4.
These days, most people drive right past Anderson’s Long Lines tower without a second glance. I know for a fact that my coworkers do when we head to lunch at a nearby pubhouse. For me, though, it’s a portal that links my childhood trips to Fort Wayne with the thrill of discovery! Finding Indiana’s old Long Line towers feels like piecing together a forgotten chapter of our past, and I’m glad that the tower in Anderson finally nudged me to start looking closer. It’s been fun to uncover the story they still have to tell!
Read everything I’ve ever written about Long Line towers here.
Sources Cited
1 Parcel 48-11-15-404-084.000-003 (2024). Office of the Assessor. Madison County [Anderson]. Web. Retrieved March 23, 2024.
2 Transmitter Characteristics (n.d.). Antennasearch. Web. Retrieved March 23, 2024.
3 Long Lines Map and Information (n.d.). Web. Map. Retrieved November 14, 2023.
4 (See footnote 2).
