- Common Language Identifier: HLSMMO
- Coordinates: 38°39’37.61″ N, 92°7’21.57″ W (38.660447 N, 92.122658 W)
- County: Callaway
- Callsign: KAI79 (inactive)
- Antenna Structure Registration (ASR): 1005497
- Height (overall): 85.3 meters (280 feet)
- Current owner: Subcarrier Communications Inc.
- Currently in use? unknown
- Horn antennas? Yes (four KS-15676 antennas, one “cornucopia” Gabriel horn, one shrouded parabolic)
- Original hops: Prairie Home, Hermann
- Later hops: Jefferson City (CO; TV only), Kingdom City
AT&T constructed a remote unmanned microwave relay facility in Holts Summit for its Kansas City-St. Louis microwave route in 1953 for relaying telephone circuits and television broadcasts. The site consists of a 280-foot self-supported tower that would have originally held four delay-lens antennas mounted on the top platform that were replaced with the common KS-15676 antennas sometime in the early 1960s. These antennas were used for telephone/television route hops northwest to Prairie Home, and east to Hermann. Sometime later, another KS-15676 horn-reflector antenna was added lower on the tower, aimed southwest to the Jefferson City central office, for a television-only spur route. (Oddly, Jefferson City’s only television station — KRCG-TV — has its studio and transmitter north-northeast of the site in nearby New Bloomfield.)
Later in the 1970s, an additional microwave relay hop was added — this time to the north, at the Kingdom City site along the Kansas City-St. Louis cable route. The site has long been redeveloped, with a “new” cell tower located south of where the AT&T base station once sat. According to Google Street View imagery, Kingdom City’s base station — which was nearly identical to the Aullville station except its windows were still installed — was demolished between 2008 and 2013, when it was replaced by an empty lot next to the cell tower.
Today, three of the five KS-15676 antennas remain on the tower. One of the KS-15676 horns pointed toward Prairie Home was replaced with a newer “cornucopia” Gabriel horn. Another “cornucopia” horn was added sometime later below the top platform aimed at Prairie Home, likely for spatial diversity. Likewise, a shrouded parabolic antenna was added on the Hermann hop likely for the same reason. The lower KS-15676 horn for the Jefferson City spur hop has been removed.
According to multiple accounts shared on the AT&T Long Lines Facebook Group, one of the KS-15676 horns (possibly the one for the Prairie Home hop replaced with a newer Gabriel model) was repurposed as playground equipment for the Central Speedway racetrack formerly located across the street from the site. Evan Glen Brendel shared this story along with photos listed below:
“Some photos I stole from the capital speedway group from holts summit Missouri. It’s all bulldozed over and is a subdivision now. But the tower is still there. If you look at the lower white section horn it changed in a few pics and then it’s gone. I’d bet the bottom ks15676 was replaced and it made its way over to the race track as playground equipment. We used to play on one over there as kids when our parents watched the races.”
—Evan Glen Brendel
At the base of the tower are three separate buildings. As with all sites along the Kansas City-St. Louis route, the base station is a concrete block building painted white with four rows glass block windows at the top. (One of the windows had been used to run ductwork inside the building from a package unit mounted on the roof.) The base station had been extended at some point on its southern side. At the northwestern corner of the base station is a smaller white block building (equipment shed) whose roof has collapsed, and next to it is the site outhouse.
A thick treeline along the site’s eastern property boundary, along Greenway Drive, previously hid most of the site from view on the street. However, sometime around 2022-23 the trees and vegetation had been removed — making the site and its buildings completely visible from the street. (The site was still heavily surrounded by vegetation when I stopped by the site in August 2021. However, Google Street View imagery showed the site being cleared in June 2024.)
During a Oct. 2, 2024, visit to the site, the smaller white block equipment shed was full of old Western Electric equipment — including a “J68345A” transmitter-receiver test set right in the doorway. Unfortunately, the equipment has been exposed to the elements for years, and critters such as spiders, wasps and who-knows-what-else have called the equipment enclosures and the shed itself home. The purpose of the shed is unknown, although it does have a RF warning label on the door.
Subcarrier Communications, of Old Bridge, New Jersey, owns the Holts Summit site and leases space on the tower to wireless communication providers. During the Oct. 2, 2024, visit, I ran into a Subcarrier contractor that was using a drone to photograph the tower. He said the photos will later be used to create a 3D model of the tower that can be used for engineering, marketing or other purposes.
Photos: Oct. 2, 2024
Photo: January 31, 2022
The Holts Summit Long Lines tower is visible from many miles away, including from many spots in Jefferson City. The below picture illustrates this point, as it was taken 6 miles away from the tower on the Missouri state Capitol grounds.
Photo: August 31, 2021
Over three years after first photographing/posting about this site, I revisited it to get a photo of the tower from a different angle. This photo comes out much better and reveals the space diversity antenna pointed toward Prairie Home still has its waveguide installed.
Photos: July 13, 2018
Photographed July 13, 2018 using a Samsung Galaxy Express Prime 2.
Historic Photos: October 2021
Evan Glen Brendel shared these archival photos of Central Speedway in the AT&T Long Lines Facebook group on October 19, 2021. Central Speedway was a dirt-track speedway that was located across from Greenway Drive from the Long Lines site. The speedway has long been closed and the land it occupied is now a neighborhood. Meanwhile, the Long Lines site is surrounded by vegetation to the point where it is mostly hidden from view from Greenway Drive.
According to multiple accounts (including Evan’s), one of the KS-15676 horn antennas was repurposed as playground equipment at the “racetrack” after being retired by AT&T. It is not known which position this horn was originally installed at, as one of the antennas on the top platform (pointed toward Prairie Home) was replaced, as were the horns lower down on the outrigger platforms.
Evan wrote this about the photos:
Some photos I stole from the capital speedway group from holts summit Missouri. It’s all bulldozed over and is a subdivision now. But the tower site is still there. If you look at the lower white section horn it changed in a few pics and then it’s gone. I’d bet the bottom ks15676 was replaced and it made its way over to the race track as playground equipment. We used to play on one over there as kids when our parents watched the races.
-Evan Glen Brendel
Construction article
An article detailing the construction of the Holts Summit tower appeared in the Nov. 19, 1953, issue of the Jefferson City Post-Tribune. A copy can be found on the State Historical Society digitized newspaper collection, or a snippet here (PDF). The article predates KRCG-TV, Jefferson City’s CBS (originally ABC) affiliate that first went on the air in 1955. The KRCG-TV studios are north of the Holts Summit site, halfway between Holts Summit and New Bloomfield.
The dates mentioned in the article indicate the site was constructed Nov. 12-26, 1953.
Television relay tower is built near Capital City
Nov. 19, 1953 • Jefferson City Post-Tribune, p. 14
A 2621/2 foot television and telephone microwave relay tower is going up in a field about one mile north of Holts Summit.
Until Jefferson City has a TV station of its own, the tower will have no affect on television reception here, officials at the tower said yesterday.
But when TV does come to Jefferson City, the tower will be “beamed” at the city and make possible good reception of network programs.
Work began on the tower — built on order of the American Telephone and Telegraph Corp — last Thursday. Completion is expected a week from today.
It is one of a series of seven towers which will connect St. Louis and Kansas City. The contractor for the job is John A. Costelow of Topeka, Kansas.
Foreman Jack McElroy, of Shawnee, Oklahoma, has nine men working on the project. His crew has completed identical towers at Prairie Home, Slater, Dover, and (Elkhorn). They plan to erect towers at Hermann next and then Gray Summit.
“Sometime in the future we’ll put up another in a St. Louis subrub,” he added. “But the date hasn’t been set yet.”
The tower rests on four points, with a perimeter of 219 feet.
Beside the tower is a flat, white structure housing a maze of wires and electrical equipment. The technical term for the building is a TD 2 radio relay station. No men are needed to man it.