Нью-Джерси штатының Крауфорд төбесі

a hill in New Jersey

Crawford Hill, sometimes known in the past as Crawford's Hill, is located in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, United States. It is Monmouth County's highest point, as well as the highest point in New Jersey's coastal plain, standing 391 feet (119 m) above sea level. The hill is best known as the site of a Bell Telephone Laboratories facility that was an annex to the Bell Labs Holmdel Complex located three miles away. In the past it was a wooded area overlooking the first farms in the area. Its height was determined at least as early as 1888. Around 1900, part of Crawford Hill was leveled to make an easier through route for the Holmdel and Keyport Turnpike. In the 1920s, driving over the hill was considered one of the rewarding local routes that the new generation of motorists could undertake. By the 1930s, the hill had a number of roadways on it as well as several working gravel pits that were WPA projects. Crawford Hill overlooks the Garden State Parkway; on the other side of that road is Telegraph Hill and the formerly named Garden State Arts Center. If a view were to be unobstructed, Lower New York Bay can be seen as well as some of the New York skyline. Crawford Hill has also been known as a good location at which to find fossils.

Bell Telephone Laboratories first acquired property in Holmdel Township in 1929. During 1955, a 60 foot parabolic antenna, nicknamed "The Big Dish", was constructed atop Crawford Hill. as well as exploring aspects of over the horizon transmission. The 60 foot antenna was prominent enough to be seen by motorists traveling on the Garden State Parkway. This became Project Echo, which in 1960 achieved success as the first passive communications satellite experiment. The first message so sent was a taped greeting by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Also in 1960, the 60 foot antenna at Crawford Hill was used to transmit and bounce a radio signal off the Moon that was received at Goldstone. At the same time that the mammoth Bell Labs Holmdel Complex was built, a much smaller and less elaborate two story building was constructed on Crawford Hill to house the Project Echo related researchers there. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs used the Holmdel Horn Antenna located on Crawford Hill to take measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation. This occurred by happenstance starting in 1964, was the 2002 recipient of the Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award for his pioneering inventions having to do with the capacity of communications systems with multiple antennas. As did Bell Laboratories itself, ownership of the annex went from AT&T Corporation to Lucent to Alcatel Lucent to Nokia. It relocated the remaining 66 Bell Labs research staff to the Murray Hill campus. The Holmdel Planning Board voted to study the issue during 2023. Holmdel officials considered using eminent domain to acquire the land involved. As of October 2023, much if not all of the annex site is planned to be preserved.