Building the KNOM tower, 1970

Building the KNOM Tower

September 10, 1970, Bureau of Indian Affairs Commissioner Morris Thompson signed off on paperwork that allowed KNOM to begin work at the remote transmitter site (although it was more than three years before the actual papers came through.) Digging began the next day.

The tower needed an excavation that was eight feet wide by a minimum of 15 feet deep. Guy anchor holes needed to be ten feet deep and five feet wide.

At first, Fr. Jim Poole, SJ hired a retired miner. The first day, the man dug the main tower hole to a depth of five feet. The frozen permafrost was hard as concrete, and after two more days, he had progressed only a few additional inches, and gave up.

Volunteers John Pfeifer and Tom Busch took to the task, and after a backbreaking ten days swinging picks, succeeded in only one additional foot.

As September 1970 ended its third week and the first flakes of snow fell, the holes were only a fraction of what they needed to be. While everyone believed that KNOM had lost the construction season, no one was willing to give up.

The frozen ground was too solid for shovel or pick, and it was a race against winter to dig the foundation for the KNOM tower and guy anchors.

September 20th, Nome’s dormant mining company, U. S. Smelting, Refining and Mining, lent Poole its custodian and “powder monkey” Sam Tucker.

Sam drove to the site in his rickety pickup truck, with Pfeifer (left) and Busch in back, sitting atop cases of dynamite with blasting caps jingling in their pockets.
At Sam’s direction, the two maintained a driftwood fire, heating immense steel chisels until they glowed red, and with sledgehammers, pounded the sizzling chisels into the permafrost.

The typical result of an hour’s work was a hole one foot deep, wide enough to stick a fist into.

They worked 12-hour days, 7 days a week.

An hour of hard pounding melted enough of the frozen gravel for a dynamite charge to be planted.
(Right) “Powder monkey” Sam Tucker packs a six-sticker, about ten feet below the surface.

Following each blast, it took an hour for John and Tom to shovel the resulting debris into a bucket and haul it to the surface.

About twelve feet below the surface, John and Tom chiseled an exceptionally large hole, which held 18 packed sticks of dynamite. "That'll be a good one," Sam muttered.

(Left) The 18-sticker blows. In the background, you can see the Nome River mouth, with the Bering Sea behind.
After 25 continuous days of picking, blasting and bucketing debris, the main tower hole was deep enough, 18 feet, but far too narrow.

Using an old miners’ trick, volunteers Tom Karlin and John Scheussler filled the hole with driftwood, added five gallons of gas and tossed in a match. Miraculously, the resulting explosion injured no one.

The fire raged for 10 hours. Although it widened the hole, it filled it with fast-freezing muck, to within 5 feet of the surface. Bucketing out the debris took 16 hours.

Karlin and Jesuit Brother Randy McIlvain quickly rigged the four holes with steel rebar reinforcing networks, and the next day, poured concrete.

The temperature was already dropping below freezing every night, and the crew assembled makeshift lean-tos of scrap lumber and plastic sheeting around the concrete piers.

Homemade kerosene smudge pots kept the curing concrete above +32°.

(Well above freezing for one of them, after one of the lean-tos became a roaring bonfire!)

Seven days later, a crew arrived from Utility Tower Company.

(Right) October 25, 1971, workers use an A-frame to hoist the first sixty feet of tower into place.

They assembled the 230-foot antenna in three work days, which were interrupted by three days of snow.

The tower was completed October 31st, beating winter by 48 hours.

November 2nd, a string of winter storms began to lash Nome with two continuous weeks of sleet, high wind and driving snow.

Today, the tower is among the oldest surviving guyed towers in the state of Alaska. Due to heavy ice, a burning guy insulator and one close airplane miss, the tower has almost toppled four times, but with good luck and proper maintenance, may enjoy another thirty years of life.

all photos by Tom Busch
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