New Cell Tower Coming to Dumont Dunes!

For years, Dumont Dunes has had little to no cell reception. The closest cell tower is 10 miles away at Ibex Pass, which is not capable of handling the crowds that Dumont sees on a busy holiday weekend. The tower gets overloaded and even if you have full bars, your call most likely won't go through. On the non-holiday weekends, you can get decent service, but you have to be in just the right spot and have Verizon. If you have AT&T, the top of Comp Hill sometimes works. If you have any other service, you can't even make a call. This poses a serious problem for emergency situations. If someone needs help, the amount of time it takes to drive down to where there is good service may mean the difference between life or death. 

Well, all of that is going to change for the users and emergency personnel of Dumont. On September 5th, Katrina Symons, the Barstow BLM Field Office manager, signed the approval of a proposal that has been in the works for the last 6 years for the construction of a cellular tower to be constructed out at Dumont.

We were thrilled when The Friends of Dumont Dunes had this exciting news to share today. Tom Gammon, Founder/President of InterConnect Towers, confirmed the project's approval and also stated that this is the largest and most complex cellular tower he has ever seen in his career! It will be located between the Southern point of the dunes Southeast of the Area of Critical Environmental Concern. It will be a shared AT&T and Verizon tower holding a complex network of SIXTEEN antennas! With an overall height of 195', it will provide much-needed coverage for the highway corridor along with the Dumont Dunes OHV recreation area for visitor entertainment and will be crucial to public safety.

Groundbreaking starts in only 10 days and the project is scheduled to be completed by November 20th of this year. 

Many thanks to the Barstow BLM for getting this approved!

Follow construction updates here,