A curated archive of Cold War-era defense technology
place • FILE-DE91C1

"CARTWHEEL Tower", Fort Reno, Washington DC

An unassuming water tower in Washington, DC, that held a critical part in the Continuity of Government plan.

DECOMMISSIONED
Compiled by: Robin Monks
Place Metadata
Status
Decommissioned
Cartwheel Tower (telecommunication tower) at Fort Reno Park. It used to serve as a Presidential Emergency Facility site.
Fig. 1 - Cartwheel Tower (telecommunication tower) at Fort Reno Park. It used to serve as a Presidential Emergency Facility site.
A 100 foot hardened windowless concrete tower stand against a slopped foreground.
The CARTWHEEL tower (center left) was built in the early 1960’s as part of a hardened “continuity of government” microwave communications network spanning various presidential and other government emergency relocation facilities in parts of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. Fort Reno, in the Tenleytown neighborhood of NW Washington, is at one of the highest elevations in the District.

Rodenstock 23mm/5.6 Digaron-S lens (@ f/6,3), Phase One IQ4-150 back (@ ISO 50), Phase One XT camera (1/25 sec exposure). Full resolution available. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

CARTWHEEL was a hardened, line-of-sight microwave terminal station built at Fort Reno Park (Tenleytown, northwest Washington, D.C.) in 1961–1962 to serve as the District hub for the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) “Presidential Emergency Facilities” microwave network. 1 2 The tower’s core mission was to keep command-and-control voice, teletype, and (reportedly) broadcast video moving between the White House (CROWN) and emergency relocation sites such as Mount Weather (CRYSTAL), Raven Rock/Site R (CREED/CADRE), and Camp David (CACTUS), under the theory that at least some routes would survive wartime damage. 3

Fort Reno sits on the highest natural ground in the District (about 409 ft / 125 m)4 . That elevation is a practical reason CARTWHEEL could “hide in plain sight” near existing water towers while still meeting the line-of-sight geometry that microwave trunk systems require. CARTWHEEL was built as a windowless, cylindrical, reinforced tower with a top section that visually masks antennas behind a translucent/painted Plexiglas radome band. The tower also had a two-level below-grade bunker wrapped around the base for staff functions and survivability systems.

  1. WHCA Cannonball blog: WHCA Microwave Network Route Map (1956 to 1977) (includes system breakdown, equipment types, and CARTWHEEL path notes). ↩
  2. Atlas Obscura: “‘Cartwheel’ Tower” (construction dates, overview, access, coordinates). ↩
  3. WHCA Cannonball blog: Presidential Emergency Facility Site 4 — ‘Cartwheel’ (tower/bunker description and first-hand operational recollection). ↩
  4. National Park Service: Fort Reno Park: highest point in District of Columbia ↩