Point Reyes Light - October 14, 1999

Park may open museum at old receiving station

The National Park Service has offered to buy property on Point Reyes owned by telecommunications giant MCI, and may open a maritime radio museum on the site which has received radio transmissions from sea since the early days of wireless until the satellite age.

MCI International closed Marine Radio Station KPH in 1997 and virtually abandoned the roughly 23-acre property near Abbotts Lagoon after global communications satellites replaced high-frequency transmissions as the technology of choice for ship-to-shore communication.

The two-story, art deco building on the property was built by the Radio Corporation of America in 1929 when the company relocated to Point Reyes from Marconi Cove. As headquarters for Marine Radio Station KPH, it was the company's flagship receiving facility on the Pacific coast.

Assistant Supt. Frank Dean of the Point Reyes National Seashore said this week the Park Service is in escrow with MCI WorldCom to buy the property. The sale price will not be disclosed until the Park Service closes escrow, which Dean estimated would be sometime this month.

"They're giving us a good deal because of the interest in having it become part of the park," Dean said. Park historian Gordon White said the RCA building will likely qualify for the National Register of Historic Places for its long association with maritime radio history.

Members of the Maritime Radio Historical Society, a small group of radio enthusiasts that includes former KPH radio operators and KWMR director Dick Dillman, have already submitted a proposal to set up radio museums at the receiving station as well as its corresponding transmission station in Bolinas, on property currently leased by Commonweal.

KMWR director Dillman said he envisions restoring the headquarters of Marine Radio Station KPH on Point Reyes to bring back the look, feel, and ambiance of its busiest years during the mid-1960's.

"It's an absolutely once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work on something like this," said Dillman, a lifelong radio enthusiast who recently restored a World War II-era radio room for the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.

Former KPH station manager Jack Martini, who concluded his 36-year career with the radio station by closing the Point Reyes facility, said a radio museum would preserve the bygone technology before it disappears into history. "Once it's gone, there's never going to be another one," he said. "This station is really one of a kind."

Dean said it's premature for the park to discuss specific plans for a museum until escrows closes and other uses of the property are considered.

But historian White said the park will likely create some sort of public facility at the historic radio building, which sits off Sir Francis Drake Boulevard at the end of a quarter-mile driveway lined with Monterey Cypress, and conveys the feel of another era.

"It's pretty opulent," White said. "It dates from a time when there was an awful lot of money. It was the heyday of wireless."

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