- Common Language Identifier: HLNAMO
- Coordinates: 39º55’19.5″ N, 94º37’08.6″ W (39.92208 N, 94.61906 W)
- County: Andrew
- AT&T call sign: KAR60
- Antenna Structure Registration number: 1010170
- Height (overall): 82.6 meters (271 feet)
- Current owner: American Tower Corporation
- Current use: Unknown
- Horn antennas? Yes
- Original paths: 1960 — Bedison, Dearborn
- Later paths: 1966 — Cameron (phone only)
The Helena, Missouri, Long Lines microwave relay site is located about two miles northeast of the small community that is situated 12 miles northeast of Saint Joseph. However, like many other Long Lines sites, its rural location doesn’t mean it didn’t play an important role in the network.
Between its construction in 1958 and the early 1960s, Helena had two paths: One north to Bedison, and another south to Dearborn. The northern path carried both telephone and television traffic, while the southern path — which continued on a route through the Kansas City district office, west into Kansas before returning into southern Missouri to split into three separate paths at Golden City Junction — handled only television traffic. Between 1960 and 1966, telephone traffic was added to the southern path and the remainder of the route onward to Golden City Junction.
With construction planned in March 1960 and completed well before October 1966, Helena gained a third path — east-southeast to Cameron — in the early 1960s. Helena was the terminal site for this telephone-only route that continued down to Dover and circled back west to La Cygne, Kansas — which was a site along the aforementioned Kansas City-Golden City Junction route.
Decades after the Long Lines network was “turned down” in favor of fiber optics and satellites, and the sites divested in the late 1990s by AT&T, the 270-foot, self-supported tower with its iconic horn-reflector antennas still stands tall above the surrounding countryside. At the base of the tower is a shelter that started out as a white block structure like the one found at Bedison, but was later (likely when the Cameron path was added) expanded with an adjoining solid, semi-hardened structure. American Tower Corporation still owns the site. Its current purpose is unknown.
Newspaper articles
Two newspaper articles were published about the Helena Long Lines microwave relay site. The first, “Micro-Wave Relay Station Takes Shape On Albert Hutton Farm Near Helena,” from an April 1958 issue of Tri-County News details construction of the tower with a photo of one of the KS-15676 horn-reflector antennas being hoisted up the side of the structure. The second, “Helena Station Brings TV, Telephone to You,” was published by the Savannah Reporter and Andrew County Democrat in April 1967 and details the site’s function. In addition to being a microwave repeater site, the article reports Helena was a base for a crew maintaining coaxial cables in the region.
Photos: July 15, 2025, by Robert Perkett
Special thanks to Robert Perkett, of the AT&T Long Lines Facebook Group, for generously allowing me to republish these photos.
