The Strangest Town In The Eastern United States Is Right Here In West Virginia… And You’ll Want To Visit
What if there was a town in America that had no Wi-Fi, cell phones, tablets, cable TV or microwave ovens? Well, there is – and it’s right here in West Virginia.
Green Bank, in Pocahontas County, is home to the the The National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The small town is within the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000 square mile region encompassing portions of West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland.
As a result, many modern conveniences we take for granted do not exist in Green Bank. The town has no radio, television or cell phone towers. There is no Wi-Fi, which rules out the use of tablets and many other devices. In fact, anything that emits a remote signal is banned, including cordless phones, wireless headphones, and anything else with a remote control function.
Even microwaves are banned because of the wave interference they emit while in operation. Cable TV and Dish Networks are also out. Internet is available, but only through dial-up or an Ethernet cable. The town even has a surveillance truck that patrols the streets looking for the emission of illegal signals, serving a kind of anti-tech law enforcement function.
So you are probably asking yourself why the title of this article suggests that you should visit this tech-free zone. The answer is simple: Green Bank Observatory.
Not only is the Green Bank Science Center filled with cool things to do and see, the telescope itself is an incredible piece of technology. The telescope is the largest fully steerable telescope in the world. It stands taller than the Statue of Liberty, and a college football field could easily fit inside its dish. The massively powerful dish itself can receive the tiniest signals you can imagine from a staggering 13 billion miles away.
