KGUL-TV Original Transmitter Site
When Channel 11 signed on in 1953, the transmitter was located at what was then Arcadia, described as half way between Galveston and Houston but actually much closer to Galveston. I've just learned that the original building is still standing, although perhaps not for long. Arcadia has since been incorporated in Santa Fe along Highway 6 and the site is just to the east of and behind Santa Fe High, on Tower Road at Maple.
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Here's the article on this blog about the launch of KGUL-TV.
8 comments:
I like finding abandoned sites.
This was Channel 8's transmitter site in the 1970's.
My Dad, Bob Savage, had a radio show at KGBC called Savage at Seven, we lived in Lindale, close to the Radio station and I use to go to work with him on Christmas Eve, when he would talk to Santa while my Mom was putting Christmas presents under the tree. Later when KGUL started up, Dad hosted Talk of the Town, I have a picture of him interviewing Jimmy Hoffa. I also got to meet James Stewart one time too.
My Dad also wrote a book about the Texas City Fire. I lived there from 1950 to 1958.
iwas a dj at kgul am radio in port lavaca texas when the call letters were first used. when i started, i was still in the air force at matagorda island and worked at kgul on the weekends. after going to school in seatttle li returned as a full time announcer and engineer. this was all bewteen dec 1962 and august 1963 when i moved on to ksix am and kztv channel ten in corpus christi texas. kgul had block programming while i was there, and i did mor and country mostly.
This was later the site for KLC Galveston Radio, a Marine Radiotelegraph station hadnling messages for commercial ships worlwide. My friend Bob Peebler was an operator there and I visited in 81 or 82.
I visited it also one evening about 79 or 80. I lived on Shady Drive parallel to Tower Road. At times the CW could be heard on my TV and radios.
My father, Robert Bruce Peebler, Sr. (W5KIW) was a radio telegrapher there in the 1950s, 1960, 1970s, and early 1980s. I remember going to work with dad in the late 1960s on the midnight watch. It was just the two of us. I probably drove him crazy that night, but it was something that I will always remember fondly. The control room was on the right (in the pictures above) It had one window ac unit at the right end. There was a wall of receivers and transmitters facing the front door, and a long desk in front of it. Near the ac, there was a teletype machine. I also remember the other room, with ancient radio tubes that were almost as big as me. It was very hot in the other room, and as soon as you walked in, the hair would stand up on the back of your neck. I visited there two or three years ago and it looked much like the photos, except that the roof had caved in. The antenna was long gone also. The call letters were KLC and it was operated by International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT) Mackey Marine until about 1975. They had wanted to close it for a long time by then, but the FCC wouldn't let them. ITT's answer was to never replace anything. I remember a typewriter there that would punch holes in the paper. The employees at the time had written in jest on it 'Property of the S.S. Santa Maria.' Another entity bought it around 1975, and promptly cut everyone's wages, prompting dad to go back to sea for the first time since 1950. He sailed until the late 1980s as the radio operator on tankers.
Thanks, Mark, and all the rest of you, for sharing your memories and knowledge.
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