Pole Farm at Mercer Meadows

Pole Tree Pasture

In 2010, Mercer County merged 5 separate parks into the “Mercer Meadows, a 1,619 acre utopian park for walking, cycling, and wildlife observation. Primarily consisting of acres upon acres of wildflower meadows. Frankly, while there are some pretty spots, most of Mercer Meadows is better for cycling or “walking” as in walking the dog than hiking. That said, check out our review of Curlis Woods Trail, which is a lovely, easy place for a woods hike and an exception to this generalization.

The heart of Mercer Meadows is the old AT&T “pole farm,” which was once a vast 820-acre antenna field that beamed telephone signals around the globe–the largest radio-telephone station in the world. Enormous timber poles were arrayed in a diamond shape rhomboids, with antenna wires stretching between them. Originally built in 1929 by AT&T, the International Radio telephone Transmission Station provided communications to Europe, South America, the Near East, and Hawaii. Many critical transatlantic conversations took place via this Lawrenceville site.  In 1932 after the Lindbergh kidnapping, the pole farm provided telephonic connections to aid in the investigation. After the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt were connected via the Lawrenceville station. By 1963 it was handling over six million calls a year; but by the mid 1970’s, the farm had been emptied, made obsolete by transatlantic cables and eventually satellites. While the forests that dot these meadows are still thick with support cables (if you look closely you can find them), there is only one pole left standing–preserved by a farmer who used it as a lightning rod.