Camp Evans Historic District is an area of the Camp Evans Formerly Used Defense Site in

Wall Township, New Jersey Wall Township is a township in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States. It is located in the New York Metropolitan Area and is a bedroom community of New York. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township's population was 26,164, refle ...

. The site of the military installation () is noted for a 1914 transatlantic radio receiver and various

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...

laboratories of the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...

(e.g., signal, vacuum tube,

dosimetry Radiation dosimetry in the fields of health physics and radiation protection is the measurement, calculation and assessment of the ionizing radiation dose absorbed by an object, usually the human body. This applies both internally, due to ingested ...

, & photo-optics). It was designated a

National Historic Landmark District National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ...

in 2012, in recognition of the site's long role in the development of modern civilian and military electronic communications.

Belmar Receiving Station

The Belmar Receiving Station was established near the Belmar community together with a separate transatlantic transmitting facility at

New Brunswick, New Jersey New Brunswick is a city in and the seat of government of Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America (American Marconi). The Belmar station included a mile-long bronze-wire receiving antenna strung on six 400 foot tall masts with three 150 foot balancing towers along the Shark River. Outgoing

Morse-code Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of ...

messages were sent via a telegraph land-line from the Belmar Station to the transmitter. The receiving site also had a telegraph land-line to a New York office. Original buildings on the campus () were built by the J.G. White Engineering Corp. between 1912 and 1914. This was part of the

Guglielmo Marconi Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi (; 25 April 187420 July 1937) was an Italian inventor and electrical engineer, known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based wireless telegraph system. This led to Marconi ...

's wireless girdle around the Earth. In one of the buildings being constructed for the Belmar station, the

regenerative circuit A regenerative circuit is an amplifier circuit that employs positive feedback (also known as regeneration or reaction). Some of the output of the amplifying device is applied back to its input so as to add to the input signal, increasing the a ...

was demonstrated on January 31/February 1, 1914. In April 1917, the Belmar station was acquired as part of the Navy's

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

Trans-Atlantic Communication System and after the November 1918 Armistice with Germany, American Marconi regained the Belmar station, which Radio Corporation of America owned from October 1919 until 1924. In 1924, the site was returned to Radio Corporation of America (RCA) ownership.

Ownership

RCA sold the site to the Monmouth County Pleasure Seekers Club which was closely tied to Arthur H. Bell and the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Cat ...

. They owned the site from 1925 to 1935. The Young People's Association for the Propagation of the Gospel purchased the Belmar station in 1936, and The King's College opened in September 1938 — when it was denied

accreditation Accreditation is the independent, third-party evaluation of a conformity assessment body (such as certification body, inspection body or laboratory) against recognised standards, conveying formal demonstration of its impartiality and competence to ...

it relocated (currently it is in the

Empire State Building The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from " Empire State", the nickname of the ...

). The Signal Corps Radar Laboratory (SCRL) of Fort Hancock (formerly "Field Laboratory No. 3") in the late 1930s used a field set-up at the Belmar station to compare US radars with the British CH- CHL Radars (additional testing of hardware was often done at the nearby Twin Lights radar station, such as a trial radar network in 1939). SCR-271-D-600

Evans Signal Laboratory

In 1941 the Belmar radio site was renamed the Evans Signal Laboratory after Wall Township purchased the original Marconi buildings and the surrounding 93 acres for the Army to move the SCRL.NRHP Registration Form citation 41 Initial construction of Camp Evans Historic District quickly built more than two dozen buildings and structures on the open land to the south and west of the Marconi buildings, including 2 boiler houses, 4 long rectangular one-story buildings, and two groups of radio antenna shelters. Two models of the

SCR-271 The SCR-270 (Set Complete Radio model 270) was one of the first operational early-warning radars. It was the U.S. Army's primary long-distance radar throughout World War II and was deployed around the world. It is also known as the Pearl Harbor ...

radar were located near the intersection of Monmouth Boulevard and Watson Road (the model D had a sign for the SCRL Installation and Maintenance School).

Camp Evans

Camp Evans was designated by

War Department War Department may refer to: * War Department (United Kingdom) * United States Department of War (1789–1947) See also * War Office, a former department of the British Government * Ministry of defence * Ministry of War * Ministry of Defence * D ...

General Order, 17 February 1942; the Camp Evans Signal Laboratory was named on March 31, 1942 (the date of the camp's dedication); and in December 1942, the War Department directed the Signal Corps General Development Laboratories and the Camp Evans Signal Lab to combine into the Signal Corps Ground Service (SCGS) with headquarters at Bradley Beach, New Jersey (Hotel Grossman). The Camp Evans lab used VT-158 tube(s), developed by Harold A. Zahl, to adapt SCR-268s for picket ships,NRHP Registration Form citation 44: modified the SCR-268 into the SCR-602 which detected Japanese

kamikaze , officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending ...

s (producing 12 renumbered AN/TPQ-3 developmental models) and on the SCR-584 tracking radar, did preliminary testing in December 1941 and added

identification friend or foe Identification, friend or foe (IFF) is an identification system designed for command and control. It uses a transponder that listens for an ''interrogation'' signal and then sends a ''response'' that identifies the broadcaster. IFF systems usua ...

. The lab also improved components (''e.g.'' for the proximity fuse) and established a special unit which tested captured German and Japanese radars. The laboratory was also responsible for Army radar development by civilian companies (''e.g.'', GE AN/CPS-1 early warning radar, Rad Lab AN/CPS-4 height finder, Bendix AN/GPN-2 & LE AN/GPN-6 search sets, and Bendix AN/CPN-18 secondary surveillance radar). By August 1943, Lt Col Paul E. Watson was the director of the Camp Evans Signal Laboratory. In addition to the Signal lab, Camp Evans had the Joint Army-Navy Tube Standardization (JANS) Laboratory and in May 1945, the Signal Corps Ground Services was reformed into the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories. Initial experimentation with an enemy mortar and artillery locating radar was conducted at Camp Evans in 1944. By the end of the war Camp Evans had approximately 134 buildings and structures on approximately 217 acres including the Meteorological Branch of the Army Signal Corps (

cf. The abbreviation ''cf.'' (short for the la, confer/conferatur, both meaning "compare") is used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed. Style guides recommend that ''cf.'' be used onl ...

the Meteorological Branch at McCook Field).

Cold War events

The facility was the initial point of contact for many top German scientists after WWII. These included

Wernher von Braun Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( , ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German and American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and Allgemeine SS, as well as the leading figure in the develop ...

and

Erich Traub Erich Traub (27 June 1906 – 18 May 1985) was a German veterinarian, scientist and virologist who specialized in foot-and-mouth disease, Rinderpest and Newcastle disease. Traub was a member of the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK), a ...

as part of

Operation Paperclip Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War ...

. Camp Evans' black engineers contributed to electronic research, development, product distribution and training. For instance, Dr. Walter McAfee at

Fort Monmouth Fort Monmouth is a former installation of the Department of the Army in Monmouth County, New Jersey. The post is surrounded by the communities of Eatontown, Tinton Falls and Oceanport, New Jersey, and is located about from the Atlantic Ocean. T ...

first calculated the speed of the moon during

Project Diana Project Diana, named for the Roman moon goddess Diana, was an experimental project of the US Army Signal Corps in 1946 to bounce radar signals off the Moon and receive the reflected signals. This was the first experiment in radar astronomy ...

(it took 40 minutes to travel 15 deg, the width of the fixed radar beam rotating with the Earth). After the World War II

Peenemünde Peenemünde (, en, " Peene iverMouth") is a municipality on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom in the Vorpommern-Greifswald district in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is part of the ''Amt'' (collective municipality) of Usedom-Nord. The commu ...

V-2 The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was develope ...

s tracked by the giant Würzburg radar had reached space and their telemetry had been received (''e.g.'', at burnout); during moonrise on January 10, 1946,

transmitted

VHF Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below VHF ...

radar pulses through the ionosphere to the moon and detected the reflection using a modified version of an experimental SCR-271 at the right of center Camp Evans. By August 1951, the Evans Signal Laboratory had a Meteorological Branch in Bldg. 39. The 1952 Army Radiation Dosimetry Laboratory was established in building 9401 which had an underground vault, a Van de Graff machine, and AN/UDM-1A

caesium-137 Caesium-137 (), cesium-137 (US), or radiocaesium, is a radioactive isotope of caesium that is formed as one of the more common fission products by the nuclear fission of uranium-235 and other fissionable isotopes in nuclear reactors and nucle ...

and AN/UDM-1

cobalt-60 Cobalt-60 (60Co) is a synthetic radioactive isotope of cobalt with a half-life of 5.2713 years. It is produced artificially in nuclear reactors. Deliberate industrial production depends on neutron activation of bulk samples of the monoisot ...

calibration sources. The building had one and a half foot walls to protect contain the radiation during experiments. After a visit on October 20, 1953.

McCarthyism McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term origin ...

claimed that Camp Evans was a "house of spies", but none of the camp's employees which Senator McCarthy investigated in 1953 and 1954 were ever prosecuted. In 1957, replacement equipment, on the frame of a captured German Reise radar, erected at the Project Diana site helped track the Soviet Union's Sputnik (

the

Deal Test Site The Deal Test Site (now Joe Palaia Park) is located in Ocean Township, New Jersey. The Joe Palaia Park was originally started as the Foxburst Farm, a tract which is now the southern portion of the park. It was purchased by Western Electric, (par ...

in Ocean Township that moved to Evans in 1973). Camp Evans became part of th
Signal Radio Propagation Agency
and developed a radar weather set The Evans laboratory transferred from the SCGS to the U. S. Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories (SCEL), which in April 1958 was renamed th
U. S. Army Signal Corps Research and Development Laboratory.
The Project Diana site with building 9162 was used for the

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

TIROS-1 TIROS-1 (or TIROS-A) was the first full-scale weather satellite (the Vanguard 2 satellite was the first experimental/prototype weather satellite), the first of a series of Television Infrared Observation Satellites placed in low Earth orbit. P ...

satellite's downlink antenna (60-foot dish shaped antenna, Space Sentry) on April 1, 1960, for the first photograph from space (the ground terminal asat

in the laboratory receiving area).http://www.historicfilms.com/tapes/8019 vintage film at minute 21:40 (film at end includes Eisenhower's voice broadcast from satellite) Radiation Incorporated's AN/TLM-18 Space Sentry at Camp Evans was used for minitrack. The Army Photo-optics Laboratory opened at Camp Evans in 1963. Most

facilities and personnel moved to Camp Evans due to the Deal site lease terminating on June 30, 1973.

Closure

The 1993 Base Realignment and Closure Commission at the end of the Cold War designated Camp Evans for closure (''e.g.'', the Army Radiation Dosimetry Laboratory closed in 1999) Evans units moved to Fort Monmouth's Main Post (Project 42682), and Camp Evans land transferred to the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational properti ...

. A section of the former camp is home to the Brookdale Campus at Wall, a branch of the Brookdale Community College. A district of Camp Evans was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 2002, and camp areas became part of the

Save America's Treasures Save America's Treasures is a United States federal government initiative to preserve and protect historic buildings, arts, and published works. It is a public–private partnership between the U.S. National Park Service and the National Trust fo ...

projecthttp://www.infoage.org InfoAge Science/History Learning Center (2005 funds were donated to restore the AN/TLM-18). In 2011
Institute for Exploratory Research
began in the basement at the InfoAge Science Center.

InfoAge

InfoAge Science & History Museums (InfoAge) was established in some of the historic district buildings . InfoAge is a member of the

Association of Science-Technology Centers The Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) is a non-profit, global organization based in Washington, D.C., in the United States, that provides a collective voice, professional support, and programming opportunities for science c ...

and was part of th
NASA Digital Learning Network
Its focus is science and the scientific and military history of Camp Evans. Exhibits and participating organizations include th
Vintage Computing Federation
Th
Military Technology Museum of New Jersey
electronic warfare, a Cold War-era fallout shelter, vintage radio, the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame and Museum
The Computer Deconstruction Laboratory
and th
New Jersey Shipwreck Museum.
Th
InfoAge Space Exploration Center (ISEC)
provides adult and youth programs that range from lectures, activities, to week-long summer programs. ISEC exhibits include the operational AN/TLM-18 antenna system, satellite models, and Apollo guidance computer.

References

{{Reflist, 2, refs= {{Cite report , last1=Waston , first1=Raymond C , last2=Lange , first2=Robie S , date=February 16, 2012 , title=National Historic Landmark Nomination: Camp Evans , format=USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form , url=http://www.nps.gov/nhl/news/LC/spring2012/CampEvans.pdf , access-date=2014-04-30 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140502211037/http://www.nps.gov/nhl/news/LC/spring2012/CampEvans.pdf , archive-date=May 2, 2014 , url-status=live , df=mdy-all {{Cite report , last1=Carl , first1=Fred , last2=Judge , first2=Robert , last3=Swanson , first3=Mark , title=Camp Evans Historic District National Register of Historic Places Nomination , url=http://www.campevans.org/_CE/html/nrhp.html , format=webpages with transcribed sections of NRHP nomination , access-date=2014-04-28 , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141116020200/http://www.campevans.org/_CE/html/nrhp.html , archive-date=2014-11-16 Military history of New Jersey Wall Township, New Jersey Ku Klux Klan Closed military facilities of the United States in the United States National Register of Historic Places in Monmouth County, New Jersey Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in New Jersey National Historic Landmarks in New Jersey