The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) Green Bank site, located in the western third of the Zone, has been the home of a number of telescopes over the years. The area was also sufficiently rural and difficult to reach that it was expected to not suddenly share in the post-war boom in development even in the 1950s, the suburbs could be noisy RF environments. Nestled in the Allegheny Mountains, the area was selected for a national radio astronomy program first for its proximity to Washington, but also for the possibility of using terrain shielding to protect the yet-to-be-built antennas from stray RF interference. Finding a convenient place to build that infrastructure that was not subject to a lot of interference was an imperative.Įstablished in 1958 by the FCC, the NRQZ is a rough rectangle of land about 110 miles by 120 miles, straddling the border between Virginia and West Virginia and just barely touching the western tip of Maryland. Playing catch-up involved building all the infrastructure needed to support a space-faring culture, and radio astronomy was a big part of those early efforts.

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and started the Space Race, the US was far behind and knew it. Like so many aspects of our contemporary technological life, the NRQZ can trace its roots all the way back to the Cold War era. Who’s listening to what and why are a fascinating part of this story, as are the steps that are taken to keep this area as electromagnetically quiet as possible. That’s the reason for the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000 square mile electromagnetic safe-zone in the woods west of Washington DC. But on the EM spectrum, most forests are nearly as noisy as your average cube farm, and that turns out to be a huge problem if you happen to run exquisitely sensitive radio receivers.

And while the woods can be a raucous place between the wildlife and the human visitors, it is indeed a world apart from a busy city street, at least in the audio frequencies. Ask a hundred people why they like to escape to the forest and you’ll probably get a hundred reasons, but chances are good that more than a few will say they seek the peace and quiet of the woods.

National radio silence zone