Elevations Connection: Sutro Tower

This post covers pages 13, 14, and 15. Comments relating to those pages can be posted here at the bottom of this entry.

You see it there. Above the fog, atop the tallest peak, creeping behind the skyscrapers of the Northeast, the Sutro Tower stands above it all.

San Francisco is full of hills. This made it a challenge for broadcasting signals until around the mid-century when it was realized that perhaps building a giant tower to allow convenient broadcast throughout the Bay Area might just be a pretty good idea.

It was the 1960s. A pyramid was taking shape, a subway was being lowered underwater, the Summer of Love was in full swing, and a stationary Googie tripod (that makes for an adorable coat rack) erected itself atop, fittingly enough, Mount Sutro in the middle of the City. This made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Like most major structures in the city when they're first built, people hated it. Unlike those major structures that became adored over time, this one just... existed. Standing there, watching over all the unassuming citizens below.

Some random, trivial facts about Sutro Tower:

• There are 249 antennas on the tower itself. These are used by 11 TV stations, 4 FM radio stations, local civic services, mobile cellular service, and other communication outlets.
• The tower is (disappointingly) not open to the public. The closest you can get is via trails adjacent nearby Summit Reservoir, though the further Twin Peaks is much more accessible.
• The tower stands tall at around 980 feet (only slightly shorter than the Eiffel Tower if you don't factor in height from Sea Level).
• The tower does not let you take control of the entire Bay Area with the right code (if it did... oh the powers I would use with that).
• It really needs to have an observation deck and a restaurant. I'd pay tons just to eat above scenic fog!
 

As one can't actually visit and go to the top as an average citizen, I would like to end on this video find (courtesy KQED) of someone who'd been able to do just that (and boy is that view pretty):

Sources:
Images by yours truly
History and research from Sutrotower.org, Wikipedia, and Exploratorium (via YouTube)