Photography by Lori M. Nichols

In Jersey, drivers are used to the quirks of the road like jughandles and traffic circles.

But in a sprawling bayside community in Ocean County, where backyards border the water and boats are parked in driveways, there’s a different kind of roundabout.

It seems more like ruins you’d see in London or Rome — a massive concrete block the size of a seaside shanty. And it’s smack-dab in the middle of a residential road.

It’s not the only one like it in the neighborhood of Mystic Island in Little Egg Harbor Township. There’s three of them, in fact, standing more than 20 feet tall and 24 feet wide, and reportedly 20 feet deep into the ground — one on Staysail Drive, another on South Ensign Drive and a third in the backyard of a home on North Ensign Drive.

Despite their size, they remain almost hidden to most of New Jersey since they’re tucked away on dead-end roads, often only passed by the residents of the streets where they’ve stood for more than a century.

But what, exactly, are they and how long have they been there?

They once served as concrete anchors holding the cables that supported one of the tallest telegraphic towers in history — one which was rumored to have played a part in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, in which nearly 1,200 passengers were killed, and an action that served as a catalyst for the U.S. entering World War I.

About 110 years ago, long before there were homes, the area then known as Hickory Island was a vast, isolated wetlands area consisting of firm ground and an unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean. Located approximately three miles south of the small borough of Tuckerton, it was exactly what German scientist Dr. Rudolph Goldschmidt was looking for to build what became known as the Tuckerton Wireless Tower.

The Germans were building this tower to communicate with a sister radio tower at Eilvese, Germany. In March 1914, nearly two years after construction began, the Tuckerton Wireless Station was completed. Despite the station allegedly being owned and operated by a private German business, the U.S. government saw no cause for alarm and assigned it official call letters of WGG soon thereafter, according to “South Jersey Towns: History and Legend,” a book written by William McMahon.

The Tuckerton Wireless Tower — then known as Goldschmidt Wireless — could transmit high-frequency messages across the Atlantic, at 100 words per minute, according to a 1973 article in The Beachcomber. Standing at 820 feet high — second in height at the time only to the Eiffel Tower — it operated at 500,000 volts, the highest voltage of any existing transmitter at the time. The tower was held up by cables secured at the 200-, 400-, 600-, and 800-foot levels and anchored into the three large steel-reinforced concrete blocks, located 600 feet from the base of the tower.

President Woodrow Wilson made the first trans-Atlantic wireless radio transmission from America to Germany from Tuckerton Wireless Tower on June 20, 1914, a day after the station officially opened. But only a month later, World War I broke out, with Germany entering the war in early August. President Wilson proclaimed neutrality, and members of the U.S. Navy were sent to all stations, including Tuckerton, to censor messages.

Wireless stations were forbidden from contacting ships at sea, but the order was ignored by the Germans, who were still running the station, and the station was ordered to cease operations on Aug. 28, 1914, according to The Beachcomber news article. Less than two weeks later, Tuckerton Wireless Station was seized by the U.S. government, although German personnel would continue to operate the station, supposedly under stricter censorship from the U.S. Navy.

On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed the passenger ship Lusitania off the coast of Ireland, as it traveled from New York to Liverpool, killing nearly 1,200 people — 124 of them Americans — of the approximately 1,960 onboard.

At the time, amateur radio operator Charles Apgar, at his wireless station in Westfield, New Jersey, had been recording unusual transmissions — which sounded like “noise” to the common listener — from two wireless stations, in Tuckerton and Sayville, New York, both German-owned, according to getlucy.org. Apgar unencrypted the “noise” by slowing down his recordings of the high-speed Morse code messages, one of which was the message “GET LUCY,” Lucy being the nickname for the Lusitania.

However, due to the United States’ neutrality in the war, it was prohibited to send critical wartime messages from U.S. soil, and Apgar immediately reported it to the U.S. government. According to Bart Lee’s 1990 article, “America’s Wireless Spies” in The Antique Wireless Association, the “GET LUCY” transmission had been sent from the Telefunken station WSL in Sayville — not the Tuckerton Wireless Station, as several news articles continued to report as late as the 1950s, when talks to demolish the tower began.

After the sinking of the Lusitania, the U.S. severed diplomatic ties with Germany, and all German personnel at Tuckerton Wireless Station were ordered to leave. The U.S. officially entered World War I on April 6, 1917, and all Germans who were formerly employed at Tuckerton Wireless remained in the area were sent to a prisoner of war camp in Virginia until the war was over in November 1918.

As part of war reparations, the German-owned Tuckerton Wireless Station was turned over to France, who sold it to Radio Corporation of America (RCA). During World War II, the tower was again used by the military for transmissions to and from England and antisubmarine service. The Tuckerton Wireless Tower was closed by RCA in 1949, due to the technology being rendered obsolete.

“It was over quick,” Falkinburg said, recalling that a lot of people parked along the road to watch it fall.

The twisted remains of the tower were cut up for scrap, yielding approximately 800 tons of steel and two miles of 2-inch cable, according to McMahon’s book.

Today all that remains of the Tuckerton Wireless Station — one of the tallest telegraphic towers in history — are the three concrete anchors and the concrete engine/power house, all of which are reportedly so solid that it would require explosives to demolish them.

When construction began on the two- and three-bedroom bungalows in the late 1950s, homes and roadways were simply built around the seemingly indestructible structures which now serve as landmarks of a bygone era.

The most visible of the three concrete anchors is located on South Ensign Drive, with the roadway circling around the structure. Part of the steel component to which the cables were once attached is clearly visible near the base, as are the small cables of steel reinforcing the concrete blocks themselves.

Another anchor, in the middle of Staysail Drive, is nearly encased in ivy and other vegetation on the western side and has a few small trees or shrubs growing on top. A white fence with reflectors on the eastern side of the block, and some ivy, nearly block the remaining portion of the steel component where the cables were attached.

The third concrete anchor is located in the backyard of a private dwelling on North Ensign Drive, partially surrounded by vegetation. It is also visible from East Playhouse Drive and Radio Road.

The concrete transmitter and power house, which appears to have been used most recently as a storage yard for a marina company but now seems unused, is located at the corner of Radio Road and Bayview Drive. Many of the windows have since been filled with concrete blocks or covered in corrugated siding, and a large garage door was installed at the front of the building. A portion of the brick smokestack remains.

Several smaller concrete blocks, which supported shorter towers at the station, can still be found in the lagoons and marshes. The water tower used at the time of operation is reportedly now onsite of the now-closed Ram’s Head Inn in Galloway Township.

The Tuckerton Historical Society, located at the corner of Leitz Boulevard and Wisteria Lane in Little Egg Harbor Township, currently has a display with artifacts from the Tuckerton Wireless Station and a wealth of information, including binders filled with news articles and photos. A piece of the base of the tower itself is showcased on the front lawn of the museum. The museum, which is free, is open year-round Wednesdays 10 a.m. to noon and 1:30 to 4 p.m., and on Saturdays from 2 to 4 p.m. from June through Labor Day. For more information, call (609) 294-1547 or visit tuckertonhistoricalsociety.org.

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