For over 20 years, Travis Szekely of Kalamazoo drove to Holland for work. And each time, he passed by the same building northwest of the small town of Allegan.
“I have been traveling down M-40 for years, and always passed this place and would notice the field filled with a myriad of antennas of all shapes, sizes, heights, and this small building surrounded by a barbed wire fence.”
The Cape Cod-style building is quite simple — brick, two story, with a garage, a shed, and even a basketball hoop out back.
It looks like many of the other rural family homes you might pass by on M-40. Except for the barbed wire fence, and the antennas jutting out of the hay field surrounding it.
Travis said he’s been coming up with theories for years, but he wanted answers. The lack of them only made his imagination run wild.
He said one of his theories related to the Cold War.
“Men sitting in there hunched over radios and vacuum tubes humming and cups of coffee boiling as they were searching for the next communist plot to befall America.”
To shed light on the property, we spoke to a man who leased it in recent years: Larry Massie.
Massie’s a historian. He’s published over a dozen books on Michigan history, and he used to store his own book collection right here.
“I moved 50,000 books into there and used it as a library where I would write, for about 23 years.”
But Massie gave up the lease in 2022, and book storage isn’t the only thing that’s gone on in this building.
Massie said it was built in 1944, where it monitored the airwaves for the Federal Communications Commission or FCC.
“Basically, the Federal Communications Commission is the policeman of the airwaves." Massie explained. "They're looking for people off-frequency, and they assign frequencies to radio stations and things like that. And they issue citations if you do something wrong on the air.”
If two frequencies interfered, or someone was broadcasting from an unlicensed frequency, often called “pirate radio”, those working here would catch it.
But when it was constructed, there was still a world war going on, and Massie says the station played a part.
“They had a whole company of infantry stationed here, guarding it during the war, because not only were they monitoring the airwaves, but they were looking for spies.”
We weren’t allowed to go inside, but after some searching, I found someone who knew the space.
“It was a good life. A small community. We were pretty, you know, close knit, a lot of camaraderie among the people, the staff,” former Station Engineer In-Charge James Roop said.
Roop worked at the Allegan FCC Monitoring Station for nearly 20 years, working his way up to the position of Station Engineer In-Charge. He left in 1996 when the listening station closed. Now he lives in Lafayette, Indiana.
Roop said while the building was unassuming on the outside, the inside was a different story.
“On the first floor is where all the monitoring equipment was located, as well as various offices for the Engineer In-Charge and his assistant and clerical people.”
Roop said the staff got along well, somewhat like a family in the faux family home.
The monitoring station was one of twelve around the nation, from Belfast, Maine to Waipahu, Hawaii. All with the same mission.
"The emphasis was on monitoring the radio spectrum. They had a routine,“ Roop said. "Each station in the network were assigned different times to monitor and they would just monitor, identify stations, record, log the transmissions.”
They weren't just listening for pirate radio and interfering signals. Some days, the monitoring stations might find a distressed ship’s SOS.
Roop said all of these sites are actually still in use, in a way.
“The monitoring stations became a victim of technology, as there's always a need for shortwave direction finding, but that could be done by remote control.”
Roop said the Allegan station closed in 1996 due to this automation. He oversaw the closure.
The now-automated monitoring happens in a small white shed at the Allegan facility. It sits a ways behind the old station, in the middle of a hay field. It's surrounded by antennas, sending the collected information to the region’s field office in Maryland.
So, after twenty years, our question-asker Travis finally has his answers. Just in time, too, as the main building is set to be demolished.
“I'm glad that I could be here at least to see the exterior of the building and hear the history of it. Because once the building is gone, the history will almost be forgotten,” Travis said.
Michael Symonds reports for WMUK through the Report for America national service program.
