Crescent Junction Wireless Relocates Fourteen Miles Closer to Moab - 2012

 

Crescent Junction Wireless Relocates Fourteen Miles Closer to Moab

Several times each year, I drive the thirty-one miles south on U.S. Highway 191 from Crescent Junction to Moab, Utah. Other than the industrial-sized natural gas drilling rig hiding off to the left, the first half of the drive features an unremarkable desert environment. About four miles north of Canyonlands Field there is finally something interesting to look at. To the southwest, atop a bluff is a lattice-steel communications tower. With its heavy structure, the tower looks more like an old-energy oilrig than a communications tower. By its shape and size, the tower appears designed to support heavy loads and to withstand high winds.

During my April 2012 transit to Moab, I decided to investigate what purpose this unusual tower might serve. Since the tower access road intersects with Highway 191 on a straight stretch of four-lane road, I planned early for my exit. Speeding and tailgating are common along this stretch of highway, so I slowed and waited patiently for traffic to clear. As I approached the intersection, I braked hard. In a cloud of desert dust, my truck and travel trailer soon came to rest in a run-off area just beyond the intersection.

Although I had hoped to take the access road up to the top of the bluff, not far from the highway I encountered a locked gate. Not wanting to trespass into a secure location, I took the time to read the only available informational sign. From that mandated steel sign, I soon had enough information to research what I call the Moab Tower.

Owned by American Tower (NYSE: AMT), the site name for the structure is “Crescent Junction”. The real Crescent Junction is almost fourteen miles north of the site. With over 47,000 owned or managed tower sites around the world, the Crescent Junction tower is one AMT’s wireless network colocation towers. With its one hundred eighty-five foot height, I could imagine the tower having a clear line of sight to another AMT tower at Green River, Utah. Looking southeast toward Moab, I could not determine if another energy tower above Moab might facilitate communications there. As it turns out, the tower was once part of the AT&T microwave tower network.

After my ten-minute visit to the “Moab Tower”, I decided to get back on the road. As I returned to my rig, I noticed that the stop sign at the highway intersection had torn loose from its mounts. There it hung head down, with a view of the Klondike Bluffs in the background. After waiting for traffic to clear, another cloud of dust followed me as I swung back on the highway to Moab.

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By James McGillis at 05:11 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

 

Moab, Utah - U.S. Highway 191 in 2011

   

On October 11, 2011, I departed the Moab Rim Campark on South U.S. Highway 191. From there, I drove north toward Moab, Utah. As I approached Downtown, I watched a motorcycle enter the highway and proceed ahead of me, traveling in my direction. Although the bike looked like an overgrown café racer, something about the rider caught my eye. As I accelerated to catch up, I realized that it was a young woman riding the motorcycle. Wearing no safety helmet, and with her hair flowing in the wind, I took a deep breath and backed off the throttle. With no adult mandatory helmet law in Utah, even young women motorcyclists are free to risk head injury with impunity. Of course, impunity from prosecution and impunity from fate are two different issues.

After passing Center & Main Streets in Downtown, I saw temporary road signs indicating highway construction ahead. Day and night, there is often heavy traffic on U.S. Highway 191 between Downtown and the new Colorado River Bridge. Even so, most of that section has long remained a substandard two-lane highway. As I drove through the construction zone, I could see that crews had widened and were now repaving the road. Still, most of the new pavement looked too narrow for four traffic lanes. On the positive side, I noticed that there were new traffic signals at either end of the new pavement. If properly synchronized, those signals could help organize southbound traffic before it reached Downtown.

Looking at the ongoing roadwork on that short section of highway, I marveled at how that substandard gateway to the City of Moab had so long endured. As I soon read in the local newspaper, resolution of highway drainage issues near the Matheson Wetlands had long stalled the project’s completion. Although final widening and alignment are still in question, the stretch of new pavement is indeed an improvement over the old situation.

On the next section of my drive, I headed north across the Colorado River Highway Bridge and then past the ever-present Moab Pile. I will write more about conditions there in my next article.

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By James McGillis at 09:55 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

Moab, Utah - I've seen fire and I've seen webcams - 2008

Moab, Utah - Matheson Wetlands Wildfire

On Wednesday, October 22, I departed Moab, Utah after three weeks of hard work, learning and meeting many new friends.  There is so much about Moab, the place, the time and the happenings that I want to share, it is hard to know where to start.

 

While ensconced in my Pioneer travel trailer at the Moab Rim Campark the night before, I heard fire engines racing north, on nearby Highway 191.  Although the nearest fire department to the south is in Monticello, Utah, fifty miles away, that fact did not register with me.  Somehow, it was nice just to hear that an emergency was receiving an emergency response, as we would wish if our property were in peril. 

 

On Wednesday morning, I hustled down to the RV Park office to create the final changes on our new webcam, streaming live from that location.  With the consent of Jim and Sue Farrell, the proprietors at Moab Rim Campark, we had installed a webcam up under the eaves of their second story.  Offering a panoramic view of the RV Park, Highway 191, the Slickrock area and the La Sal Mountains, our new webcam offers the world a completely new view of Moab, Utah and its weather patterns.  If you like, you can view the webcam at MoabLive.com or MoabRV.com.  Just click on either link and be patient as the webcam loads.  With the view changing every five seconds day or night, I assure you that you will not be disappointed.

 

Wednesday morning, I was so busy with the webcam that I failed to notice a column of smoke rising from the  Matheson Wetlands Preserve, which fills the space between the City of Moab and the nearby Colorado River.  According to the Wildlife Action Plan (WAP) for the area, the Matheson Preserve's lowland riparian habitat is the most critical habitat type in all of Utah.  As a unique wetland, it formed when the Colorado River bend in the Spanish Valley eroded its outside bank, leaving its former watercourse as a tangled swamp or reeds, bulrushes and non-native Tamarisk trees.

 

As with so much of the Desert West, the Matheson Wetlands are no longer as wet as they once were.  Although the water table there rises and falls with spring runoff or the occasional thunderstorm, a system of irrigation and water control dikes has turned much of the southern pond into “solid ground”.  Hunters and others camp or party in clearings, amidst the tangled undergrowth found throughout the preserve.  Did one such individual or group leave a campfire unattended the prior day?  Perhaps ironically, the fire appears to have overlapped a prescribed burn originally planned for October 2008.  That burn was only a small part of a wetlands restoration project planned for the preserve.

 

As I connected my pickup and travel trailer that morning, the wind came up and swept the fire from up near Highway 191 and the Colorado River, downstream to the gap where Kane Creek Road meets the river canyon.  Luckily, the firefighters stopped the fire there, but it was dramatic to watch, even from several miles away.

 

As I prepared to drive back to Los Angeles, I remembered a bit of Moab history.  In 1855, eight years after founding Salt Lake City, a party of forty-three Mormon men built a rock fort in the area now called the Matheson Wetlands Preserve, near the Colorado River.  Growing crops and attempting to convert local Native Americans to their religion became the Mormons’ primary challenges.  Additionally, they sought control of the strategic river crossing and trade with travelers along the wagon road known as the “Old Spanish Trail”.

 

The naming of Moab retains elements of controversy.  Some say that the original settlers named Moab for its appearance, supposedly being similar to an area located on the eastern side of the River Jordan.  Others say Moab was a bastardization of the Paiute Indian word “moapa”, meaning mosquito.  Either way, with the coming of regular postal service and incorporation of the town in 1902, the name Moab became official.

 

Several months after their 1855 arrival, Native Americans attacked the Moabites, burning crops and killing three settlers.  The Mormons then abandoned Moab, not to officially return until 1878.  With its cultural affinity and geographical proximity to Colorado and Arizona, Moab grew into the twentieth century more as a typical Western town than as a Mormon colony.

 

To my knowledge, the remnants of the old fort did not survive the one hundred fifty-plus years of mud and floods visited upon the Matheson Wetland Preserve by the mighty Colorado River.  Perhaps the denuding of that area will lead to renewed archeological interest in locating remnants of Moab’s original, if brief, non-native culture.

 

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By James McGillis at 06:25 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link