- Common Language Identifier: OKGVMO
- Coordinates: 38°57’29.80″ N, 94°06’43.50″ W (38.95828 N, 94.11208 W)
- County: Jackson
- Callsign: KAI85 (inactive, AT&T), KTBG-FM
- Antenna Structure Registration (ASR): 1005503
- Height (overall): 136.9 meters (449.15 meters)
- Current owner: American Tower Corporation
- Currently in use? Yes, leased as FM transmitter for KTBG-FM
- Horn antennas? No
- Original paths: 1966 — Kansas City DO, Holden
Built around 1963-64, the former AT&T Long Lines site near Oak Grove, Missouri, relayed telephone calls, television broadcasts and other traffic between the 1960s and 1980s/90s, when the network was slowly replaced by fiber optics.
Oak Grove was the first hop east on the Kansas City-Halifax-Oakdale, Illinois route. Oak Grove featured two microwave paths: one to the west-northwest to the regional headquarters in downtown Kansas City, around 27 miles away; and a second to the south-southeast to Holden, around 20 miles away.
The site is located more than 3 miles south-southeast of Oak Grove’s city center off East Round Prairie Road. The site’s location makes it difficult to photograph, as it is secluded in a rural residential area. The only access to it is a private driveway which passes a couple homes.
While Oak Grove, like many other Long Lines sites, has long been turned down and had its iconic KS-15676 (and other) horn antennas removed, the site is still used for other purposes. Like other sites, Oak Grove hosts cell phone antennas. More notably, the Oak Grove site serves as the transmitter for KTBG-FM (known to locals as “The Bridge,”) the local NPR affiliate in Kansas City. KTBG is operated by KCPT-TV, the local PBS affiliate. (KTBG-FM was formerly owned and operated by the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, my alma mater. The station was sold in 2013.)
The site is owned by American Towers, who leases tower and transmitter space to cell carriers and KTBG/KCPT. The FCC ASR registration number is 1005503, which reports the tower was constructed in October 1964.
Submitted (C. Vance) photos
Special thanks to C. Vance for sending these photos to me. He has listed these photos under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Creative Commons license.
