Residents Hope to Fund Museum at Site of Radio Ranch

They’ve started the last roundup down at the Radio Ranch.

Nobody’s out lassoing heifers or steers, though. They’re hunting for cash cows.

Residents of the Palos Verdes Peninsula are hurrying to raise money so they can save part of a legendary ridge above the Pacific Ocean that for nearly 50 years was Los Angeles’ ear to the world.

So far, they have managed to keep the historic broadcasting site from completely being covered over with new luxury homes. And they’ve persuaded a developer to construct a free radio museum building on a tiny corner of the Radio Ranch--provided they find a way to pay for its completion and operation.

The negotiations in Rancho Palos Verdes have led to an unusual alliance between city officials, homeowners and developers instead of the static that shortwave antennas often cause in other communities.

But then the Radio Ranch, 22 miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles, was an unusual place.

Built in 1938 as a foreign listening post for newspapers, it had become America’s foremost amateur radio station in 1985 when it signed off the air for the last time.

The ranch was world-famous for its 150 wooden radio towers and the 45 miles of antenna wire that was suspended between them. The antenna cables led to a bunkhouse-like building where the most sensitive receivers and powerful transmitters available were lined up on tables.

During World War II, the transmitting gear flashed military messages written in secret code to American soldiers and sailors on the front lines in the South Pacific.

At the same time, incoming dispatches from war correspondents and reporters in foreign capitals poured into the bunkhouse to be relayed to America’s newspapers and radio stations.

By the 1950s, the ranch was seeing use as a radio tracking station by Los Angeles aerospace companies during guided missile tests over the ocean. The firms also used it for testing new telemetry systems.

When earthquakes struck South America or China or cyclones raked faraway Pacific islands, the Radio Ranch was usually the first to hear details of the calamity.

There were 16 huge antennas scattered over the 120-acre site. They were called “rhombic” antennas because the heavy copper wire that stretched between poles formed diamond patterns when viewed from above. Each antenna was aimed toward a different corner of the globe.

Much of the shortwave equipment was handmade and downright primitive by today’s transistorized standards. Huge amplifiers capable of pumping out thousands of watts of power could send sparks flying across the room if a connection pulled loose. Wall-size transmitters could sputter and die without warning if a glowing vacuum tube overheated and popped. Ear-piercing squeals could come from bunkhouse loudspeakers when receivers drifted off frequency.

But the results were spectacular when everything went right. And things usually did at the Radio Ranch.

The ranch was established by the Press Wireless Corp., a consortium of newspapers looking in the late 1930s for a way to inexpensively relay foreign news to the United States. Members included The Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Associated Press and United Press Assns.

Press Wireless selected the ridge at what is now the corner of Highridge and Armaga Springs roads with the help of Long Beach amateur radio operator Don Wallace. He had already made a name for himself by being the first to alert the world to the devastation caused by the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.

Wallace calculated that the ridge’s 1,200-foot elevation would be good for international shortwave transmitting. It turned out to be the almost perfect spot: When the news organization moved its radio base closer to its headquarters in San Francisco in the mid-1940s, Wallace scrambled to purchase the site for himself for $35,000.

The Palos Verdes antennas helped turn Wallace into a legend among ham operators. From the bunkhouse, his W6AM call sign was eventually flashed to 365 countries--including places that no other American amateur operator had ever reached.

Grandson Alexander Wallace, now a Long Beach lawyer, remembers riding in his grandfather’s car through the then-rural peninsula while the man operated a 1,000-watt mobile transmitter.

“The unusual thing was that he tapped out messages in Morse code as he drove,” Wallace recalls. “The key was on a slab of wood between him and the passenger. I’ve never heard of anybody else who used Morse code in their car.”

At age 83, Wallace was still routinely strapping on a telephone lineman’s belt and climbing his 140-foot-tall towers to make repairs to the rhombic antennas, according to friend Jan David Perkins, a Cerritos ham operator who has recently published Wallace’s biography.

When Wallace died in 1985 at the age of 86, his broadcasting gear was put into storage and the antennas and the old bunkhouse were torn down. The Radio Ranch’s remaining acreage was sold for development.

But Wallace and the towers still stood tall in the memories of Rancho Palos Verdes residents.

“He was such a dynamic man and happy guy and his accomplishments were such an important part of radio communications that people wanted to do something,” said John Vanderlip, who is considered the patriarch of Palos Verdes and lives in a hilltop cottage built 75 years ago when his family owned the entire 16,004-acre peninsula.

“He had all this huge equipment and microphones. It was mysterious and fascinating. If guys like him hadn’t done the work, we wouldn’t have what we have today,” Vanderlip said.

The museum campaign was launched by Ken Dyda, a co-founder of Rancho Palos Verdes and its former mayor.

Learning that the Radio Ranch had been sold for a housing project, Dyda mapped out a plan that called for the developer to donate both land and a museum building to the city.

Officials decided to use one of the developer’s Italian-styled model houses for the museum. It would blend in with the new neighborhood and be easy for the developer to build, Dyda said.

The idea quickly caught on at the peninsula, which is home to about 400 amateur operators. One of them is Peter Von Hagen, head of the Rancho Palos Verdes Planning Commission.

“I’d bought my house here in 1968 because of Don Wallace’s success with radio,” said Von Hagen, a ham for 34 years. “Most everybody on the hill knew what was up there. They saw the rhombics and were probably aware of its historical significance.”

Rancho Palos Verdes City Council members Mel Hughes and John McTaggart are also licensed amateur operators.

Hughes, who was drawn to Palos Verdes 27 years ago because of its reputation among shortwave radio enthusiasts, said the museum will also serve as an emergency communications center for the peninsula during disasters.

The City Council is expected to receive a parks committee recommendation on the radio museum plan on Tuesday. Officials have calculated that donations of about $165,000 will be required for interior construction, the design of displays and the creation of an operating museum radio station.

About $42,000 has been collected so far. But groundbreaking could take place when $100,000 has been raised, according to Joe Locascio, a Rancho Palos Verdes ham who is helping to coordinate the fund-raising.

Ham radio operators across Los Angeles who have contributed to the campaign say the museum will be the first of its type west of the Mississippi River. Jeff Wolf, a Palos Verdes Estates amateur operator who has battled with neighbors over his own home’s 35-foot antenna, predicted it will help demystify radio--and prove that hams and homeowners can coexist.

“Unfortunately, more and more builders are putting prohibitions on outside antennas in the (deed restrictions) of new developments,” said Jay Holladay, a Jet Propulsion Lab manager from La Crescenta who is a vice president of the national American Radio Relay League. “It’s frustrating.”

Ironically, one such development is the Wallace Ranch--the name given the tract of 82 luxury homes that is now under construction at the old Radio Ranch.

Tract sales agent Bill Cross said purchasers of the new $1-million houses are being advised that the museum--complete with shortwave antennas--is planned for a corner of the tract. But they are also being told that Wallace Ranch deed restrictions prohibit them from having outdoor antennas of their own without special permission from a homeowner architectural committee that will be formed later.

That’s fine with Lynne Kurland, the first resident to move into the new tract.

“A museum would be nice--a few pictures on the walls and whatever,” Kurland said.

“But I’m not sure I want to see a radio tower go in. And I don’t think other people will, either.”