If you’re driving through the flat, endless stretch of Traill County, North Dakota, you might see it. Or maybe you won't. Honestly, from a few miles away, the KVLY-TV mast looks like a literal needle in a haystack—if the haystack was several thousand acres of corn and soybeans. It’s a skinny, steel stick that somehow manages to touch the clouds without falling over.
Most people think the Burj Khalifa is the end-all, be-all of height. They’re right, but only recently. For a huge chunk of modern history, this random tower in Blanchard, North Dakota, was the tallest thing humans had ever built. Period.
The KVLY-TV Mast: A Steel Giant in a Field of Corn
Completed in 1963, the tower was a massive flex for the Red River Valley. It didn't just break records; it smashed them. It was the first time any man-made structure crossed the 2,000-foot threshold. At its peak, it stood at 2,063 feet. To put that in perspective, you could stack nearly five Eiffel Towers on top of each other and you'd still be looking up at the blinking red light on top of this mast.
The station originally changed its call letters to KTHI just to drive the point home. The "HI" stood for "Tower High." Pretty on the nose, right?
It held the world record for eleven years until the Warsaw Radio Mast in Poland took the title in 1974. But then, in 1991, the Polish tower collapsed during maintenance. Suddenly, by default, the title of "Tallest Structure in the World" came back to a small township of about 26 people in North Dakota. It stayed the king of the world until 2008, when Dubai decided to build the Burj Khalifa and ruined the streak.
Why go that high?
It wasn't just for bragging rights. Radio and TV signals work on line-of-sight. The higher you are, the further your signal reaches before the curvature of the Earth cuts it off. In a place like North Dakota, where towns are spaced out and the land is flat as a pancake, height is everything. This single mast covers about 9,700 square miles. That’s roughly the size of New Hampshire.
The Secret "Shrinkage" of 2019
Here is the weird part that most travel blogs and "fun fact" websites miss. The KVLY-TV mast isn't 2,063 feet tall anymore.
In 2019, the FCC did something called a "spectrum repack." Basically, they moved TV stations around to free up space for 5G and mobile data. Because of this, the old top-mount VHF antenna on the mast became a useless piece of scrap metal. Workers hauled it down, and when they did, the tower’s official height dropped to 1,987 feet.
It’s still massive. It’s still terrifyingly tall. But technically? It’s no longer the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere. That title actually moved five miles down the road to its "shorter" neighbor, the KRDK-TV mast, which sits at 2,060 feet.
Imagine being the champ for decades and then losing your crown because of a digital upgrade. Kinda brutal.
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What It’s Like to Actually Climb the Mast
I’ve seen videos of the maintenance crews. It’s not for the faint of heart. There is a small two-person elevator, but it doesn't go all the way to the top. It’s a slow, rattling ride that takes you most of the way up, but for the final stretch, you're on a ladder.
You’re basically standing on a piece of steel no wider than a dinner plate, 1,900 feet in the air, with nothing but guy wires and wind for company.
The tower is held up by a web of cables that take up 160 acres of land. These aren't just ropes; they’re massive steel tethers anchored deep into the North Dakota soil. Without them, the whole thing would fold like a lawn chair. During winter, ice buildup on these wires is the biggest threat. If the ice gets too heavy and then falls off, it can literally slice through the roof of the transmitter building at the base.
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- Weight of the lattice tower: 855,500 pounds.
- Construction time: Just 30 days (back in 1963).
- Construction cost: Around $500,000 at the time.
Visiting Blanchard: What You Need to Know
If you’re a "high-pointer" or just a fan of weird engineering, you can drive right up to the base. But don't expect a gift shop. There’s no visitor center, no plaque, and no "I climbed the KVLY mast" t-shirts. It’s just a gravel road, a small concrete building, and a fence.
Most people who visit say the same thing: it doesn't look that tall until you're right under it. Because the North Dakota landscape has zero landmarks—no hills, no skyscrapers, no big trees—your brain has no way to judge the scale. It just looks like a thin wire disappearing into the blue.
Actionable Tips for the Modern Tech Tourist:
- Bring Binoculars: Since you can't go up, the only way to see the detail of the antenna array or the service elevator is with some decent glass.
- Check the Weather: Do not go if there’s a hint of high wind or ice. Not because the tower will fall, but because falling ice from the guy-wires is a genuine "final destination" style hazard.
- Download Offline Maps: Cell service can be spotty out in the fields, and Blanchard is easy to miss if your GPS decides to take a nap.
- Visit the KRDK Tower Too: Since it's only five miles away, you might as well see the new height champion of the Western Hemisphere while you're in the neighborhood.
The KVLY-TV mast is a relic of an era where we built massive, physical things to solve digital problems. Even though it's been "shortened" and surpassed by glass-and-steel towers in the Middle East and China, there is still something incredibly impressive about a 60-year-old steel mast in a North Dakota field that still keeps the lights on for thousands of homes. It's a testament to 1960s engineering that hasn't just survived—it's still working.