Tower Tales

All-talk radio station KFI-AM was thrown off the air for over an hour Sunday morning after a small plane hit its broadcasting tower in La Mirada. (That's a photo of the aftermath above.) Unfortunately, the two people aboard the plane died, reports the AP:

The Cessna 182 struck the KFI tower about 9:45 a.m. and the tower tumbled to the ground, said Bruce Nelson, operations officer for the Federal Aviation Administration in Los Angeles.

The tower only caused minor damage to the surrounding buildings; KFI is now broadcasting at reduced power from an auxiliary antenna.

AM antennas are still scattered throughout the region, but most FM and TV signals shoot toward Los Angeles and Orange County from Mt. Wilson, high above the Southland.

Scott Fybush recently documented Mt. Wilson's tower farm on his excellent website (where I got the photo above). Even if you're not into this kind of stuff, Scott gives a fascinating tour of a place high above the city, which few of us will ever visit:

The legendary Mount Wilson, nearly a mile above sea level (5715 feet at the Mount Wilson Observatory, to be exact), yet within sight (on a clear day) of the entire Los Angeles basin and the Pacific Ocean beyond. That's something like 10 million people within the line of sight of this mountaintop, which means it was no surprise that it's the site of choice for nearly all the FM and TV stations that serve this magnificent market.

There are, in reality, five groups of towers that make up this site, each one distinctly visible (and all but one readily accessible by road) as you make the long drive up from the valley below. (It's only a few miles as the crow flies from the summit of Mount Wilson to Pasadena, directly below, but the twisty drive up the Angeles Crest Highway and Red Box Road takes the better part of an hour from La Canada-Flintridge, where the highway begins.) The "group shot" shown here takes in the two most prominent clusters of towers.

It's an unusual community up there -- engineers who live and work there for a week at a time (the heavy supply of RF signals would make it foolish to stay any longer), enough that there's even a working post office.

Before it became home to L.A.'s TV and radio transmitters, Mt. Wilson served as a getaway for city dwellers (and, of course, as home to the Mt. Wilson Observatory, which recently celebrated its 100th anniversary).

In the early part of the 1900s, visitors took the Red Car up to the top, where the Mt. Wilson Toll Road company operated the Mt. Wilson Hotel. After the first hotel burned to the ground, another, bigger hotel was built in 1913.

That structure lasted until 1966, when Metromedia (which owned KTTV/Channel 11) dismantled the building and opened Skyline Park -- a recreation spot complete with a pavilion and children's zoo.

Marvin Collins has a history of Mt. Wilson here. He writes:

Most of the early endeavors on Mt. Wilson were never financially successful. The Mt. Wilson Toll Road was more a labor of love than a money making enterprise. Skyline Park proved to be no exception. It was closed on January 1, 1976 after Metromedia decided to cut their eight and a half years of losses.

Metromedia turned Skyline Park over to the Forest Service, which opens the land to vistors on the weekends only -- and during the warmer months. (It can snow pretty heavily up there, as the postcard above from 1910 can attest.)