History of Lookout Mountain Antenna Tower Land

Broadcasters Seek Tower Sites

The National Broadcasting Company Surveyed the Denver Area
for a Television Transmitter Site - Rocky Mountain News (3/28/1944)

“The transmitter will be erected on some mountain peak,” said Mr. William Hedges of NBC. “Of course, the whole program must wait until after the war and (more) scientific advances.” Green Mountain, North and South Table Mountains, and Lookout Mountain were considered. The only site with easy transportation to the summit was Lookout Mountain.

• 1945 Lookout Mountain Inn built east of Buffalo Bill’s Grave next to today’s KWGN-TV2 Tribune tower
• 1946 JeffCo Commissioners revise zoning resolution and maps. All of Lookout was platted for Mountain Resident-1 by 1924; Beth & William Weller replat Lookout Mountain Park 2-4 to “Panorama Estates” and “ Panorama Heights.”
• 1949 Jack and Marie’s restaurant replaces a burned business built where Cody Inn now stands.
• 1948 Banks deny mortgage applications for mountain areas when the JeffCo Assessment Roll and Tax Warrant book listed 254 “improved” properties in Rockland School District 13 (Mt. Vernon Canyon). In 1948, when there were only 500 yearround residents of Evergreen, improved properties in Mount Vernon Canyon were listed as follows:

85 Mt. Vernon Club Place
58 structures on unplatted land
35 Cody Park
17 Panorama Heights #1
16 Rilliet Park
12 Clear Creek Heights
19 Cold Springs & Genesee Ridge
4 Panorama Heights #3
4 Lookout Mountain Park #6
- ( Cedar Lake towers)

Two Jefferson County Commissioners Set a Precedent
John R. Browne (1929-1937) and Clarence Koch (1951-59)
Set a precedent by selling lots they had acquired during the 1930s to antenna entrepreneurs. According to 1940s-50s Golden postman Dick Grenfell and Lookout Mountain Trading Post owner (1942-1972) Pat Butin, there were about 25 homes within one-half mile of today’s Cedar Lake and Buffalo Bill antenna farms when the first TV transmitter was installed.

Both remember about 12 cabins and homes on Cedar Lake Road “City on the Hill” and another dozen on unplatted land surrounding it by 1952. They say the stone house at the Cedar Lake Road summit was built in 1925. Hundreds of summer cabins could have been destroyed by fire before the towers. Records of volunteer fire departments did not begin in the mid-1950s.

KFEL Buys FM Site on Lookout Mountain
Rocky Mountain News (10/31/1952)

Radio station KFEL purchased one acre of agricultural land for a television and radio tower site east of Buffalo Bill’s grave. “KFEL’s site is the former terminal of the old cable railway that climbed 2000 feet from just west of Golden to the mountain summit. … With other Denver broadcasters negotiating for or having acquired property in the same general vicinity, many envision a radio and television center atop residential Lookout Mountain that will rival the Mount Wilson project for the Los Angeles area.” The RMN failed to mention that Mt. Wilson is five miles east and two miles above Pasadena on undeveloped U.S. Forest land. Lookout Mountain had been a fully platted residential area since the 1925. People were excited about television and knew nothing of electromagnetic radiation, asbestos, tobacco, or DDT during the 1950s.

At the JeffCo Planning Commission hearing on Dec. 2, 1998, long-time Mt. Vernon Country Club resident Gudy Gaskill testified, “I remember when we first saw the red blinking lights added to our city view. When we learned it was for television, we assumed it was safe to have the towers there. The power line was then strung across the mountain. We didn’t approve, but people didn’t question government much in the 1950s.” There were no public hearings allowing the public to speak on tower developments in their residential area.

Lynn Johnson Lindbloom moved to Colorow Road in 1957 when she was a teenager. “There were only four towers until the mid 1970s. My parents and their neighbors had grown accustomed to the towers. It occupied such a small portion of their wonderful views, they didn’t realize it could cause a problem until the mid-1980s and even then, people were afraid to speak up as it could hurt the real estate value of their homes,” she said.

Mountain residential plats were slow to develop until home mortgages became competitive with flat-land rates in the mid 1960s when I-70 was planned to pass through Mount Vernon Canyon. Historic Evergreen and Mt. Vernon Canyon plats became prime real estate by the early 1980s.