Delano Transmission Station, California

The Los Angeles division of the broadcasting company CBS built this transmitting facility for the Office of War Information in 1944, in the town of Delano, north of Bakersfield, one of two shortwave transmitters on the west coast, in addition to the one in Bethany, Ohio, built to transmit programming internationally during the war. It was nearly identical to the one built at the same time by NBC in Dixon, California, and like that one, Delano directed its programs to the Pacific Rim and Asia. They were built for broadcasting federally produced radio programs, especially the Voice of America, to targeted nations around the world during World War Two. After the war, the programming continued, and expanded through the Cold War, when two more transmissions stations were built on the east coast, for a total of five powerful shortwave transmitting plants in the USA, boosted by relay stations overseas. Like Dixon, and the Bethany Station in Ohio, Delano was expanded with more and larger transmitters, exceeding a million watts of broadcasting power by the early 1950s. As with the other two World War Two-era plants, the federal government took direct control of the facility from private contractors in 1963, as the Cold War heated up. Unlike the other two, Delano was enhanced with television broadcasting capabilities, using satellite transmission dishes. Delano ceased operating in 2007, the last of the three World War Two-era VOA facilities to close. As with Dixon, its antennas are still in place, though most of the transmitters have been removed and reused. One of them was recently acquired and moved to a broadcasting museum in Bloomfield, New York.  The 800-acre site is still owned by the federal government, which is waiting to hear if the town of Delano’s proposal to build an airport at the site will be approved by the FAA. If it is, the towers will have to be removed, and the fate of the main building is unknown.