Cell tower threatens historic site

AT&T Mobility has proposed placing a 100-foot-tall tower on a small hill off Bradley Road just to the east of Sisters. AT&T wishes to increase coverage for their cellular customers between Aspen Lakes Golf Course and the City of Sisters.

AT&T has admitted that they have chosen the site on Bradley Road, located on Exclusive Farm Use land, because as farm land there is no homeowners association surrounding this site to protest the development of the land. The proposed site is 600 feet lower than McKinney Butte, which lies directly to the west between Aspen Lakes and the City of Sisters, and not AT&T's best alternative, just the easiest for them.

The cell tower, as proposed, will tower over the William T. E. Wilson Homestead, which is on the National Historic Registry. The Wilson Homestead is the only remaining Historic Farmstead in Deschutes County, the other being the Boyd Homestead which was displaced when they built the Bend River Mall in Bend.

My husband and I purchased the Wilson Homestead in 1996 and placed the entire 160-acre homestead on the National Historic Registry in 1998. We have worked hard to restore the site - homestead house, fields, stream banks, and outbuildings. The setting in the canyon has sheltered that site since it was homesteaded in 1885, and those sheltering canyon walls have kept it virtually intact - a valuable resource that deserves protection. One of those hillside walls will, if this is approved, now host a huge cell tower on top of it.

When people visit the farm, they are currently able to see the site as it was in the early 1900s - the cow barns and pig sheds, the old-style fencing. I think the Wilsons who homesteaded that property originally and the Thompsons who lived there for 50 years would be as disappointed as we are, that a giant tower will be built and will loom over the creek, the house, the farm and fields, forever changing the feeling of life in Central Oregon as it has been for more than 100 years.

When you put a property on the historic registry, you give up some rights- you do that to preserve the past for the future. There are laws in place -Oregon Goal 5 and Federal Law-Section 106 - that offer protection against just this type of intrusion on a historic site, but Deschutes County seems hard pressed to enforce these protections without a larger outcry.

We are currently working on getting citizen input - we'd like to hear from people who would like to help us preserve this site. We need you to send letters to the Deschutes County Commissioners in support of the preservation of the historic Wilson Homestead from this cell tower intrusion.

Deadline for letters of support are due by July 7, 2009. You have to reference the permit application: AD 09 2. Please send letters or e-mails of support for our efforts to retain the beauty of this historic place to :

Deschutes County Commissioners Tammy Baney, Dennis Luke, Alan Unger 1300 N.W. Wall St., Bend, OR 97701.