AT&T Long Lines

Barnett, Missouri, repeater site with its horn-reflector antennas still installed.

Shortly World War II, American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation — AT&T — began work on a nationwide microwave relay system spanning from New York to San Francisco. By the 1960s, AT&T’s Long Lines, colloquially known as the “Telephone Skyway” or “Skyway,” would be responsible for transmitting long-distance telephone calls and television broadcasts throughout the United States and Canada.

To accomplish its mission of a coast-to-coast telephone and television relay network, the Bell System constructed hundreds of towers dotting the American landscape. Some sites were located in large central offices (which served as the telephone switching hub for the city it was located in) several stories tall, others were unmanned sites in the middle of a cornfield in Missouri, and some were buried underground to protect itself from attack.

As a sign of the times when the Long Lines system was constructed, many sites were semi-hardened, hardened or even underground to keep the system online in the case of a nuclear attack. Because many defense systems — such as the Distant Early Warning line of radars installed in the Arctic Circle — relied on telephone lines to relay signals back to military installations, such as the U.S. Air Force’s SAGE installations, it was critical the network stayed online. Some relay sites also acted as ground entry points (GEPs) for military radio systems, such as the Echo-Fox network that communicated with Air Force One, or AUTOVON. Large hardened and underground sites often have large turbine generators that can keep it running for lengthy periods, and featured accommodations for people who may be staying at the site. In case of a nuclear blast, these sites were constructed to withstand the blast and its fallout. The sites also had decontamination showers, fallout shelters and kitchens stocked with supplies just in case the worst-case scenario occurred.

All sites, regardless of how well it was built to withstand a blast, were made for resilience. After all, a single site could be handling thousands of telephone calls or several television broadcasts. The Bell System had many issues to contend with, such as the reliability and longevity of the vacuum tubes used in its equipment, other equipment failures, and external factors such as power failures or vandalism. With the massive research arm of Bell Telephone Laboratories, and Western Electric — Bell System’s manufacturing arm — many issues were easily solved. Each facility had a backup generator, and all remote (unmanned) sites had alarm systems that alerted technicians at a local office of any issues. If a site did completely fail, the system was designed so that channels carrying calls could be diverted. Long Lines also had portable relay stations that could be set up if a site was down for lengthy periods, such as when the “American Republican Army” destroyed a Utah repeater site in 1961.

Terrestrial microwave relay, however, had become surpassed by fiber optics and satellites as the Cold War grew to a close. Following the Bell System’s divestiture in 1984, parts of the Long Lines system slowly started going dark as the radios were “turned down” as fiber optics became more prevalent. In the 1990s, the boom of digital communications, such as the internet, started farther widespread adoption of fiber lines that had far greater capacity. Today, nearly all of the original Long Lines microwave relay routes have long been out of service since the 1990s or 2000s.

While the Long Lines system has been retired, AT&T kept some of the larger sites for use as switching centers or fiber hubs. However, a majority of the sites were sold off. In 1999, AT&T sold most of its towers to American Tower Corporation, who in turn leases out space to users such as cell carriers and land mobile repeater operators. (AT&T even leases some of the former Long Lines sites for its mobile cell service.) Other sites went to smaller tower companies, such as Subcarrier Communications, McCullough Comsites or “Sedalia Smiles”. Over time, the towers have further changed hands — such as many of McCullough’s former Long Lines sites now being used as repeater sites for the Missouri Statewide Interoperability Network used by public safety agencies in Missouri.

With the new use, however, comes erasing a part of the past. The Western Electric TD-2 microwave radios the sites originally used have mostly been long recycled, and the iconic KS-15676 horn-reflector antennas also removed and recycled to make space for new antennas. Some sites have been converted for other uses, and a few have been completely removed. The internet, however, allows for these sites — and memories of the Bell System altogether — to be remembered in the future.

Since 2018 I have documented several former Long Lines sites in the central Missouri region, with plans to visit and photograph more in Missouri along with neighboring states. In some cases, I have republished others’ photos or information of area sites, with credit. Click here to read more about my personal connection to the AT&T Long Lines network.


Missouri sites

My goal is to photograph former Long Lines sites in the Central/Western-Central Missouri area. Here are the ones already photographed.

Missouri Long Lines sites index


Misc. Sites

Links with asterisks were photographed by others.


More information and documents


Links

For more information on the Long Lines system, check out my detailed entry here.

  • Long Lines.com – A collaborative site with a graphical Long Lines map, site details and photos. (Operated by the organizer of the former N3TUQ map.)
  • Long Lines.net – Albert LaFrance’s Long Lines website, a wealth of information and incredible resource.
  • r/LongLines – the AT&T Long Lines subreddit.
  • AT&T Long Lines Facebook group – a private Long Lines Facebook group, featuring detailed information, photos, and other related chat among ex-Bell System/LL employees and those interested in the network.
  • The Central Office – website with photos of Bell System/RBOC Central Offices
  • Bell System Practices list

Updated Jan. 5, 2025.

2018-2024, Garrett Fuller. The information and photographs, unless created by someone else and/or otherwise stated, contained in this section are listed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. My works in this section are listed in the public domain to inform of, and preserve the history of, the AT&T Long Lines network. Free, non-commercial use of my photos are OK, as long as you: provide credit (to myself — Garrett Fuller — preferably with a link back here, and/or the respective author of other photographs submitted), and “share alike” using the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.