AT&T Short Hill Mountain Site, Virginia

This AT&T site atop a mountain near Harpers Ferry was built by AT&T in the 1960s. The station is part of the company’s communications infrastructure, and especially the part of it related to military communications. It is similar to four other facilities on the mid-Atlantic region known as Project Offices, which had large, concrete, parabolic tropospheric communication antennas, and an underground bunker of at least several thousand square feet, with a drive-in entrance. In addition to its communication function, these sites were suspected to have had facilities for government officials or workers to be housed in the event of a nuclear attack. Four of the five Project Office sites are still in use in some form. At this site, in 2016, AT&T was proposing to build a 160,000 square foot building next to the underground building, but without being able to adequately specify its function, the plan was not supported by locals, and the company changed its mind. The large concrete antennas were removed a few years ago, in anticipation of this development.