From the 1940s through the sixties and seventies, AT&T built thousands of Long Line towers as part of its transcontinental microwave communications network. It’s been decades since they were used for their original purpose, but one used to stand near Salem in Washington County.
How do you demolish a two-hundred foot Long Line Tower? Do you take it apart piece by piece? Do you knock it down with a wrecking ball? What about just tipping it over? In Salem’s case, workers appeared to use the latter method. In October 2018, the tower was standing proud as ever, even though its old KS-15676 horn antenna had been removed. A year later, it was lying on its side. All that remains today is the tower’s old concrete “bunker.”
Washington County’s assessor website says that the bunker, and presumably the old Long Line tower it once served, was built in 19801. If true, that makes it a real latecomer to the system! During its AT&T days, it relayed a signal from Floyd’s Knobs about twenty-four miles southeast, to Clear Springs, twenty-two miles northwest2.
After the Long Lines program ended, AT&T deaccessioned most of its towers around the year 2000. Today, the city of Salem’s Board of Aviation owns Salem’s old Long Line Tower site3.
Sources Cited
1 Parcel 88-23-14-000-041.000-021 (2025). Office of the Assessor. Washington County [Salem]. Web. Retrieved November 1, 2025.
2 Long Lines Map and Information (n.d.). Web. Map. Retrieved May 26, 2024.
3 (See footnote 1).
I’m sort of amazed that more of these didn’t get repurposed as cell phone towers. It seems like it would be a good use.
Here in Portland there were many water towers built on the deep east side, when the area was unincorporated county land, and each neighborhood seemed to have their own water district. Now these areas are hooked up to the main city water supply, but they kept the water towers up. And many of them now have cell phone antennas.
I am too. Many were, but more seem not to have been. I’m unsure why.
It would be interesting to catalog the obsolete water towers of Portland!
It would also be interesting to see if any of those bunkers is good for alternative uses.
I agree! I haven’t done a lot of research into what all is inside them, but they appear to be stuffed with all sorts of obsolete equipment.
Do you have any knowledge on this location in Orleans/Leipsic located at 5596 E 790 N, Orleans, IN 47452? This place always intrigued me. My dad remembers a lot of activity in that area back years ago. Only thing I could ever find is it’s an L3I Power Feed Station.
I don’t, but I’m happy to try and research it!