AT&T Site on Hearthstone Mt. in MD.
The Text Content on Page 1 of The Hagerstown Morning Herald, July 25, 1977 is: 
Arial view of AT&T on Hearthstone Mt. looking at the ridge line to Cross Mt. and Cannonball TowerHello, Hello
If there ever is a nuclear war restoring the nation’s telephone network might be one of the first orders of business.
That’s one of the reasons why American Telephone and Telegraph Co has buried a telephone switching station high atop Hearthstone Mountain four miles north of Clear Spring and just two miles from the Navy’s silo on Cross Mountain.
Although it’s not as secret as some government facilities around the area officials explain that the installation is designed to withstand the effects of a nearby nuclear blast.
The station which consists of 70000 square feet in a two and a half story underground building is made of concrete.
The delicate telephone gear inside is mounted on shock absorbers and the outside antennas about the only thing visible from a distance are en-cased in concrete pods
Access to the building is gained huge steel blast doors. Like other hardened sites the station has its own food and water supply. Filtering would remove nuclear particles from the air in the event of an attack.
The Hearthstone station is one of 65 around the world that provides routine telephone global com for the US military.
According to operations manager Bruce Parr the station normally handles only military traffic and in a busy hour it can relay thousands of telephone messages. But the equipment inside the station is standard telephone switching gear and Parr says it could be used to handle emergency or commercial traffic. Two other underground stations are also located in the area. One is at Monrovia in Frederick County and the other at Drainsville, VA near the Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia borders.
Parr says Hearthstone was picked as a site primarily because of its high elevation a, factor vital to reliable microwave communications. The 5.5 million dollar facility was built in the mid-1960s and is manned 24 hours a day by about 30 people according to Parr.
He says doesn’t pretend that nobody knows where or what the station is but he explains that the facility is not open to the public for “safety and for the protection of the personnel who work here”.
Article by PAUL BERTORELLI
The Text Content on Page 1 of The Hagerstown Morning Herald, July 25, 1977 is:
Arial view of AT&T on Hearthstone Mt. looking at the ridge line to Cross Mt. and Cannonball Tower
Hello, Hello
If there ever is a nuclear war restoring the nation’s telephone network might be one of the first orders of business.
That’s one of the reasons why American Telephone and Telegraph Co has buried a telephone switching station high atop Hearthstone Mountain four miles north of Clear Spring and just two miles from the Navy’s silo on Cross Mountain.
Although it’s not as secret as some government facilities around the area officials explain that the installation is designed to withstand the effects of a nearby nuclear blast.
The station which consists of 70000 square feet in a two and a half story underground building is made of concrete.
The delicate telephone gear inside is mounted on shock absorbers and the outside antennas about the only thing visible from a distance are en-cased in concrete pods
Access to the building is gained huge steel blast doors. Like other hardened sites the station has its own food and water supply. Filtering would remove nuclear particles from the air in the event of an attack.
The Hearthstone station is one of 65 around the world that provides routine telephone global com for the US military.
According to operations manager Bruce Parr the station normally handles only military traffic and in a busy hour it can relay thousands of telephone messages. But the equipment inside the station is standard telephone switching gear and Parr says it could be used to handle emergency or commercial traffic. Two other underground stations are also located in the area. One is at Monrovia in Frederick County and the other at Drainsville, VA near the Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia borders.
Parr says Hearthstone was picked as a site primarily because of its high elevation a, factor vital to reliable microwave communications. The 5.5 million dollar facility was built in the mid-1960s and is manned 24 hours a day by about 30 people according to Parr.
He says doesn’t pretend that nobody knows where or what the station is but he explains that the facility is not open to the public for “safety and for the protection of the personnel who work here”.
Article by PAUL BERTORELLI
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