Rock River AT&T relay site, near Rock River Wyoming, was one of a string of Long Line microwave links built out in the 1950’s to provide transcontinental telephone service, both private and military. Fiber optic made this system redundant and the sites were sold to “American Tower Company”. ATC determined that this and a number of other sites had no particular value for cellular or FM radio broadcast and put out to auction in 2002. I bid $8500 to obtain the leasehold for Rock River to use as an amateur radio 6 meter repeater station for southeast Wyoming. 6m mobile radios are capable of spanning far greater distances than pocket cellular devices. It was granted a coordinated frequency pair but the station was never built for reasons below.

The first problem was Sea West gated and locked the access to the state highway. AT&T had access rights over the private land so that issue was soon resolved. The next problem that came up was the site itself was no longer BLM land. It seems BLM sold the underlying property in 1998 to the local rancher, Mark Ledder aka Medicine Bow River Ranch, so that the AT&T communication site federal lease was no longer of any force and effect. BLM did inform the rancher to negotiate new leases but that never happened.

Now that it was privately owned, Laramie County assessor came after me for property taxes. Tax on cattle grazing land was nothing, but they intended to collect personal property tax on the tower and equipment at the same rate they assess on Cellular communication sites. I explained that the site had been abandoned for commercial use long before it became taxable by the county and in any case that was an issue it had to discharge with the actual owner, ATC. On going it would be only used for amateur radio which by Federal regulation is non-profit. That argument fell on deaf ears, they tax at the “highest and best” utilization, ie as if it were a working cellular tower.

Up shot was i gave a quit claim to the rancher in exchange for the bid price i had paid to ATC and ATC was liable for the current year taxes. That was the last i had anything to do with it. I suspect that a deal was made with Sea West to remove the tower so they could extend their line of wind generators and give the tax assessor new blood.

It certainly was a nice site. Well built to stand up to the rigors of Wyoming weather without any maintenance. no water but it did have 3 phase power provided by Carbon County REA and on-site caterpillar back-up genset. Beside the genset there was the battery bank DC chargers. I suppose the radio equipment all ran on battery power. The diesel tank had already been drained or i could have made some serious profit on this deal. I believe all the microwave electronics had been removed. There was a phone line (twisted pair, lead shielded) that ran to the town of Rock River.