- Common Language Identifier: LWTNMO
- Coordinates: 37°55’44.00″ N, 90°18’21.00″ W (37.92889 N, 90.30583 W)
- County: Ste. Genevieve
- Callsign: KAS37 (inactive)
- Antenna Structure Registration (ASR): 1005501
- Height (overall): 62.8 meters (206 feet)
- Current owner: State of Missouri
- Currently in use? MOSWIN repeater
- Horn antennas? No
- Original hops: 1960 — Hillsboro (NW), Alliance (SE)
In the 1950s, AT&T constructed a line of microwave relay sites spanning from Elsberry to Campbell in Missouri. The first four sites along the Missouri portion of this route — Elsberry, Wright City, Gray Summit and Hillsboro — made the western side of the “St. Louis ring route.” (The “ring” was continued into Illinois with Waterloo, Mascoutah, Highland, Gillespie and Newbern.) Telephone traffic continued southward from Hillsboro in the ring route to Lawrenceton, which relayed to its southeastern neighbor in Alliance. This microwave route continued southward into Arkansas before terminating in Memphis, Tennessee. (By 1966, the route was extended even further south, this time extending all the way south to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Television traffic had also been introduced on the route from Hillsboro south, even though the rest of the St. Louis ring route still only handled telephone traffic.)
The Lawrenceton site is located less than 12 miles southeast of the Halifax site along the Kansas City-Halifax-Oakdale, Illinois, route. Route Y, which terminates less than half a mile northeast of the Halifax site, will take you three-fourths of the way to the Lawrenceton site, which is secluded on a gravel road high in some hills. The road the site is located on — Tower Road — is named after it. Despite being so close to the Halifax site, the two were never connected.
Lawrenceton is a rather basic site. White concrete block base station building (no windows) and a 200-foot tower that once supported two sets of three horn-reflector antennas for its microwave hops. Access to the site is limited by a gate off Tower Road.
The original horn-reflector antennas are gone, replaced by a dipole array at the very top of the tower. That, along with the style of site identification signs and camera/loudspeaker above the main entrance gave me a good idea of who currently owns the site. And, I was right.
The State of Missouri currently owns the site for its Missouri Statewide Interoperability Network (MOSWIN) public safety land mobile radio system. The site is used as a repeater for that network, which is a trunked P25 network used by law enforcement, fire departments and other authorized agencies. Like other Long Lines turned MOSWIN sites, McCullough Comsites owned the Lawrenceton site after AT&T divested its microwave relay sites in the late 1990s.
Photos: October 17, 2024
