RCA / Marconi Wireless Stations:

Guglielmo Marconi sited and commissioned the building of wireless telegraphy transmitting station in Bolinas and receiving station in Marshall, on Tomales Bay, in 1913-14. They formed the foundation for the most successful and powerful ship to shore and land station, known as “KPH”, on the Pacific Rim. The Marshall station was replaced in 1929 by a new Art Deco-designed facility at Point Reyes Beach on the “G” Ranch. Few of the succeeding generations of antennas, arranged in “farms”, remain at the two sites. However, the radio equipment, some of it dating to the World War II-era, remains intact, functional, and used for ceremonial occasions by former RCA key operators. The Monterey cypress “tree tunnel” at the Point Reyes station is a signature landscape feature that evokes some of the prestige that RCA placed in this profitable, historic operation. Studies are underway to ultimately list both National Seashore sites and the Marshall facility, now a California State Parks conference center, together as a multiple property National Historic Landmark.

The park archivist has begun the task of organizing over 200 linear feet of operations records inherited from MCI and coordinating curatorial work related to preserving the historic radio equipment. Volunteers from the Maritime Radio Historical Society logged over 1800 hours in the year 2000 organizing and restoring artifacts and equipment. MRHS volunteers put station KPH back on the air for the annual July 12 commemoration of the last commercial transmission of Morse Code in the U.S.