Coast Star - September 2, 2004 - Wall Township now owns 17 acreas of Camp Evans
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The Coast Star
  September 2, 2004

By Fred Carl
Page 8, cont. 51
 evans logo
Wall Township now owns
17 acres of Camp Evans
By Fred Carl
     On Aug. 25, the U.S Department
of Defense Base Realignment and
Closure office transferred the first
17 acres of the 37-acre Camp Evans
Historic District to Wall Township
[see related story] . This transfer,
begun in 1993, positions the historic
site for a new beginning as a
science-history education site .
     The 17 acres of Camp Evans
transferred is along the Shark River,
north of Marconi Road.  It includes
a large part of the Marconi Wireless
Station and the Project
Diana/TIROS site .
     The property was transferred to
Wall without a fee as a public benefit
to the American public.  To meet
the requirements of the transfer
many citizens, the Township
Committee and many township
officials have invested considerable
time and energy to meet the transfer
requirements to save the historic
site for education .
     First, in 1993, the Township
Committee appointed citizens to
the Marconi Reuse Committee. The
reuse committee is chaired by
Michael Fitzgerald.  After dozens of
meetings, using input from the
community gathered in public hearing
in 1995, they developed the
Marconi Park Complex reuse plan.
 The plan was approved by the
Township Committee in 1996 and
accepted by the Department of
Defense .
     The BRAC program requires
every property it transfers must be
environmentally clean and safe for
the new owner. A Restoratio n
Advisory Board [RAB] was formed
in 1996 to review and comment to
the BRAC cleanup team . The RAB
is led by Robert McAllen . The
RAB, which has met nearly 100
times since its formation, is instrumental in assuring community
interests are considered in the long
cleanup process . The BRAC cleanup
is managed by Charles Appleby,
the Base Environmental
Coordinator and its work is overseen
by representatives of the state
Department of Environmental
Protection and the federal
Environmental Protection Agency.
     In 1993, a group of citizens
began exploring the possibility of
saving a portion of Camp Evans as
a historic site dedicated to education. Members of the group visited
and collected information about
successful science centers around
the country and provided this information to the Marconi Park Reuse Committee. The input was incorporated in the plan .
     In 1998, the group of citizens
incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation, the Information Age
Learning Center, or InfoAge.  The
group of volunteers did research
into the history of Camp Evans in
the National Archives and university
libraries, and interviewed U .S .
Army veterans who worked at
Camp Evans.  Much of this research
is posted on their extensive web site

  

http://www.infoage.org.
     InfoAge members developed a
75-page nomination of 37 acres of
Camp Evans as a historic district t o
the State Register of Historic
Places .  To qualify for transfer as
historic property the site needed to
be listed on the National Register of
Historic Places.  In 2000 the state
approved the nomination.  InfoAge
then submitted the nomination to
the National Park Service NPS for
listing on the National Register of
Historic Places .  The Old Wall
Historical Society and Rep . Chris
Smith [R-NJ] helped win approval
for the nomination in 2002.
     Once the area was listed on the
National Register and as a BRAC
site,  the NPS approved the transfer
of the Camp Evans Historic District
as a historic monument dedicated to
education in 2002 . Wall Township
submitted the application to the
NPS Surplus Historic Properties
Program.  The complex application
was four inches thick and contained
28 drawings, and more 200 photos
and illustrations . The application
was prepared by InfoAge volunteers
Fred Carl, Robert Judge and
Larry Tormey.
     From 2000 to the present many
issues arose in the property clean up
and transfer. The Wall Township
Committee and the Camp Evans
RAB were steadfast in insisting that
no property would be transferred
until the site is safe and clean.  They
also refused to allow the property to
be sold at auction.  Rep. Smith again
helped Wall every step of the way,
the advocacy group PreservationNJ
helped focus attention on the sewer
 replacement issues and the National
Trust for Historic Preservation provided
legal consultation to Township Attorney Roger McLaughlin and the Wall Township Committee .
     The negotiation skills of Mr .
McLaughlin, Mr. Robert McAllen ,
Township Administrator Joe
Verruni and Mayor Mr. Robert
Peters resulted in a agreement for
the transfer of a clean and environmentally safe historic district in
three phases .
     Now that the first transfer ha s
been completed, the InfoAge organization can continue preservation
work on the site . Over the past two
years volunteers have painted the
exterior of all the Diana site buildings.  The funds for paint were provided
by the Wall Kiwanis Club and the Fort Monmouth AFCEA chapter.  Currently the Ocean- Monmouth Amateur Radio Club and the Quarter Century Wireless
Association have been offering
Morse code classes on site .
     Josh Foxton, a Wall Township
Eagle Scout candidate, has been
working to restore the gate guard
hut with the help of the Wall
Township Public works.
     The InfoAge goal is to bring
space education programs to the
site. Infoage has been invited by
NASA to send representatives to
Kennedy Space Center in November to help develop space education programs for science centers.  InfoAge is preparing the TIROS command and control building for radar history and space
See ACRES, PAGE 51



- ACRES -
From Page 8
education programs .
     The New Jersey Antique Radio
Club is preparing the west Marcon i
cottage for the temporary home of
the National Broadcaster Hall of
Fame and the club's historic radio
collection.  Once the second phase
of the Camp Evans transfer is complete,
the displays will be relocated
to a larger building .
     The 17 acres transferred on
Wednesday have a special place in
communications, World Wars I and
II, astronomy, space exploration
and meteorology history . From the
early days of spark gap wireless to
the age of satellites, the site played
a part .
     Even before the Marconi Station
was completed, 90 years ago in
August, celebrated communications
history was made at the site on
Jan . 30 and 31, 1914 . The young
electronic circuit innovator Edwin
Armstrong arrived at the station
with Marconi Company employee
David Sarnoff .  They were there to
test Armstrong's first breakthrough ,
the regenerative circuit . The successful
test has been called the beginning of modem radio by historians.  With Armstrong's new circuit, wireless stations could be clearly heard as far away as Germany and Hawaii from Wall . Armstrong would recall his visit to
Wall every year until his death on
the anniversary of his visit. 		     During World War I, the U .S .
Navy would take over the station
and operate it as the central communications point for wireless messages to Europe.  Some of the most
important messages of World War I
passed through Wall.   Secret antenna
research done in Wall by the
Navy staff would change wireless
technology and give the Allies
important technology advantages .
During World War II, the site
hosted the U .S . Army Signal Corps
radar laboratory . Cutting edge
radars were developed, improved
and tested before American industry
made them by the thousands to
help win the war. The radar units north within the 17 acres were used
to search for Nazi U-boats along the
coast .
     Just after the war, on Jan . 10 ,
1946, Signal Corps engineers made
scientific history, created a new
branch of astronomy and proved
space communications was possible. Project Diana was designed to
prepare America to defend itself
with radar against future advances
in rockets by the Soviets.  Those
working there improved World War II-era radar to detect rockets above
the ionosphere.  The method they
used to demonstrate radar and radio
communications could travel into
space and return to earth was to
bounce a radar signal off the moon.
Once the feat was announced, the
press realized this showed that
space travel to the moon was possible
.		      Without the ability to communicate
back to earth space travel would be much more difficult, if not impossible.  Futurists like Arthur C. Clarke had advocated for the development of communication satellites to orbit the earth.  Now that the skeptics, who said communications in space was impossible, were proven wrong, the Army began its space program .
     The feat also created the science
of radar astronomy.  Over the next
months, scientists from Princeton
and observatories visited Wall to
study the moon and nearby comets
with radar. To prepare for satellite tracking and for a future landing on
the moon, the Project Diana antenna
was replaced with a 50-foot dish .
The dish was ready to track the first
scheduled advanced function
American satellite when the Soviets
launched Sputnik. The Soviet surprise
was tracked from Wall 24 hours a day. Later space scientists created detailed maps of the moon using the radar and tracked every American and Soviet space launch into the 1970s.
     On April 1, 1960 the Diana site
received signals from the first
weather satellite, TIROS, using the
60-foot dish found at the site today .
The site was now the NASA TIROS
Command and Control Center for
the fist two experimental weather
satellites.  In the building attached to
the giant antenna, the first 22,000
photos of cloud formations from
 space were developed and sent to
NASA in Washington. This was a
great leap in meteorology. The first
typhoon was seen in Wall . Weather
scientists realized what powerful
tools these cameras in space were,
and an entire operational series of
satellites was built to help weather
prediction worldwide.  No longer
would typhoons and hurricanes hit
land without warning, killing thousands .
    These 17 acres have an amazing
past and many people and organizations have worked and are working to preserve this past and create a new future for Camp Evans in education.

[Fred Carl is director of the
InfoAge Learning Center at Camp
Evans.]

page updated November 15, 2004   page created November 15, 2004


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