The North Dakota Mast That Was Once the Tallest Thing on Earth
The KVLY-TV mast near Blanchard held the world height record across three separate reigns. Then it lost 76 feet in 2019 and handed its last two crowns to the mast about five miles away.
Three miles west of a town with sixteen people in it, a lattice tower climbs nearly two-fifths of a mile into the Red River Valley sky.
For about 28 of its 63 years, across three separate stretches, this was the tallest structure humans had ever built. The record passed through Poland, outlasted a helicopter crash and an ice storm on the tower next door, and was taken away twice: once by Warsaw, once by that neighbor.
It is not North Dakota’s tallest structure anymore. It is still the state’s best piece of trivia. The correction is more interesting than the claim.
This is a roadside look with a very long story behind it. If you are collecting the state’s outsized claims, it belongs beside the rest of North Dakota’s superlatives and the asterisk on Grand Forks’ busiest-airport title. If you are still choosing where to spend your days, start from the North Dakota Guide.
The mast at a glance
- What it is: the KVLY-TV mast (formerly KTHI-TV), a guyed television tower
- Where: three miles west of Blanchard, in Traill County. Blanchard itself sits at the ND 18 / ND 200 Alternate junction, and mainline ND 200 runs 10 miles north
- Topped out: November 8, 1963, after months of delay
- In service: February 8, 1964
- Height today: 1,987 feet (605.6 m)
- Height from 1963 to 2019: 2,063 feet (628.8 m)
- Owner: Gray Media
- Carries: KVLY-TV (NBC on 11.1, a CBS simulcast on 11.2, signal on UHF 36), plus two smaller tenants
Built to beat a record
In 1962, the tallest structure on Earth was a 1,749-foot broadcast tower in Georgia. Channel 11’s owners wanted to beat it for a plainer reason than glory: a mast tall enough that one Fargo signal could cover Grand Forks too.
Kline Iron and Steel of Columbia, South Carolina, built the tower, and Hamilton Erection Company put it up. Local legend remembers a fast build. The construction record does not: the project stalled after crews found that Bethlehem Steel had shipped defective steel for this tower and two others nationally.
The antenna finally topped the 1,950-foot lattice tower on November 8, 1963, at a cost of roughly $500,000 (about $5 million now). The mast went into service on February 8, 1964.
Twenty-eight years, three reigns
1963–1974. The mast stood as the tallest structure on Earth.
1974. Poland’s Warsaw radio mast opened at 2,120 feet (646.3 m), 57 feet taller, and took the crown.
August 8, 1991. Mid-swap on a Warsaw guy-wire, with the cable disconnected and the replacements not yet attached, the Polish tower gave way and snapped roughly in half. KVLY, unchanged at 2,063 feet, reclaimed the record by default.
1991–1998. KVLY held the title until its own neighbor, the KXJB mast (later KRDK), briefly stole it. Rebuilt in 1998 after collapsing twice, it was topped with a four-foot flagpole: 2,064 feet, one foot taller, and briefly the tallest structure on Earth.
1998–2008. Flagpole off, KVLY was tallest again.
April 2008. The Burj Dubai, later the Burj Khalifa, passed KVLY’s height while still under construction: 2,064 feet that June, according to the Grand Forks Herald.
January 4, 2010. The Burj Khalifa opened at 828 m (2,717 feet), about 654 feet taller than KVLY ever stood, and has held the world’s-tallest-building title since.
Add it up: KVLY was tallest on the planet for about 28 of its 63 years. That is three reigns, interrupted twice: once by a mast that fell in Poland, once by its own neighbor.
Why it lost 76 feet in 2019
Here is the part most retellings get wrong.
KVLY-TV shut off its analog VHF signal on channel 11 on February 16, 2009, the day before the original national deadline for the digital transition. That instantly retired the mast’s top-mounted VHF antenna, a leftover from the analog era. It sat unused for a decade.
Separately, in 2019, the FCC’s spectrum-repack auction moved KVLY’s digital signal from UHF channel 44 to UHF channel 36, effective May 28. Both channels are UHF, so that move had nothing to do with retiring a VHF antenna.
What the repack triggered was tower work. The antenna came down when the mast was rebuilt that October, five months later, removing the decade-idle antenna and 76 feet of height. That left the mast at 1,987 feet, still nearly 1.4 times the Empire State Building.
So is it still North Dakota’s tallest structure?
No. Not “not technically.” Just no.
KVLY held two overlapping records even after it lost the world title: tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere, and tallest guyed mast on Earth. It is often said that nothing in the Americas came close, but that is not quite right. Its own neighbor was only three feet shorter (2,060 feet to KVLY’s 2,063), and a California tower near Walnut Grove came within fifteen.
What kept the records safe was regulatory rather than structural. The FCC and FAA apply a rebuttable presumption against antenna towers over 2,000 feet above ground, approving them only in “exceptional cases.”
What finally beat it was the 2019 antenna removal, which handed both crowns to that same neighbor. Unchanged at 2,060 feet, the KRDK-TV mast near Galesburg is now about 73 feet taller than KVLY’s post-2019 height: the tallest guyed mast in the world, and the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere.
The neighbor’s history is the disaster movie
If KVLY’s story is endurance, its neighbor’s is a run of catastrophes.
At 9:08 a.m. on February 14, 1968 (a timestamp single-sourced to a period newspaper our desk could not independently verify), a Marine helicopter struck the guy-wires of the original 1966 KXJB mast. All four people aboard died, and the tower came down. KXJB-TV went dark for eight days, resuming through an older tower it had already sold to the AM station KOVC, before a full replacement was finished four and a half months later.
Then, on April 6, 1997, an ice storm with 70 mph gusts loaded the mast with more than four inches of ice, and it collapsed again. A temporary 735-foot tower (KXJB-TV Mast 2, still standing nearby) was broadcasting within three months.
The permanent replacement matched the old height by July 30, 1998, and with a four-foot flagpole on top it briefly measured 2,064 feet: the tallest structure on Earth, not merely the hemisphere, for a few weeks that summer. Broadcasting switched over on August 15. The flagpole came off eventually, but the record it set still stands: the highest flag ever raised on Earth, other than the one Apollo astronauts left on the Moon.
Valley weather has a way of ending up in the engineering record. The 1957 storm that taught the world to read tornado damage crossed the same flat valley.
What the mast actually carries
KVLY-TV is a working NBC affiliate for the Fargo–Grand Forks market, broadcasting on UHF channel 36 but signing on as virtual channel 11. Subchannel 11.2 simulcasts CBS from KXJB-LD, so “NBC affiliate” undersells it. The mast also carries two smaller tenants.
The station has carried four call signs. It signed on in 1959 as KXGO-TV, became KEND-TV in 1963 for “Eastern North Dakota,” then became KTHI-TV, a change timed to the tower’s activation and delayed a week, to February 8, 1964. A December 1963 Fargo Forum article said the initials stood for “Tower High.” It became KVLY-TV in 1995, a nod to the Red River Valley.
How 1,987 feet stacks up
- 533 feet taller than the Empire State Building (1,454 feet, tip to tip, with its antenna spire)
- More than 1.8 times the height of the Eiffel Tower (1,083 feet, with the digital antenna added in 2022)
- 258 feet taller than the Willis Tower, even counting its twin broadcast antennas (1,729 feet)
- 730 feet shorter than the Burj Khalifa (2,717 feet), today’s tallest building on Earth
What you can actually see today
The mast stands three miles west of Blanchard, in Traill County, roughly halfway between Fargo and Grand Forks. You can see it from area roads near Blanchard, and on ground this flat, with nothing else vertical for miles, the view from the road is most of the experience.
Getting closer is a different question. Visitors report that the base is fenced, and this is an active broadcast structure rather than a staffed attraction, so plan on the roadside look. Nothing about the stop is ticketed; it costs nothing.
Two practical notes before you drive out. First, this is ordinary valley highway and county-road country, and North Dakota weather decides how ordinary: check the North Dakota Department of Transportation’s official ND Roads conditions and weather report before leaving, especially in winter. Second, the bonus stop is the record holder. The KRDK-TV mast near Galesburg, about five miles away, is the tallest structure in the Western Hemisphere, so if that is the title you came for, that is the tower to look at.
For a fuller sense of where this fits in a trip, the statewide things-to-do field guide sorts the state by region and time, and the North Dakota Guide organizes every story here by question, route and subject. For another enormous prairie structure with complicated access and an equally strange record, read about the Nekoma pyramid.
Frequently asked questions
Is the KVLY-TV mast still North Dakota’s tallest structure?
No. A 2019 antenna removal dropped it to 1,987 feet. Its neighbor about five miles away, the KRDK-TV mast near Galesburg, is taller at 2,060 feet.
Is the KVLY-TV mast still the tallest structure in the world?
No. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, at 2,717 feet (828 m), passed KVLY’s height in April 2008 while still under construction and opened in January 2010. It is the tallest completed building on Earth today.
Why did the KVLY mast get shorter in 2019?
Not for the reason most people assume. Its VHF antenna had been dead weight since KVLY shut off its analog signal in 2009. The 2019 channel move was UHF to UHF and did not retire it; the tower work that the repack triggered is what finally brought it down, cutting the mast to 1,987 feet.
Can you visit the KVLY-TV mast?
You can see it from area roads near Blanchard, and there is no charge. You probably cannot get close: visitors report the base is fenced, and it is an active broadcast structure. Check ND Roads for current conditions before making the drive.
What is North Dakota’s tallest building, as opposed to its tallest structure?
The North Dakota State Capitol in Bismarck: a 21-story Art Deco tower, 241 feet 8 inches (73.66 m), tallest in the state since 1934. Fargo’s RDO Building, at 235 feet, is the runner-up. The state’s own Capitol Complex history covers the building.
Source notes
Federal antenna structure registrations for both towers: ASR 1046244, the KVLY-TV mast, and ASR 1038731, the KRDK-TV mast. These are the federal registration records for the two structures.
KVLY-TV mast and KVLY-TV. These reference articles support the construction account, the builders, the defective-steel delay, the antenna-topping and in-service dates, the 1963–2019 and current heights, the 2009 analog shutoff, the 2019 repack and October tower work, ownership, subchannels, the mast’s two smaller tenants and the station’s four call signs.
KRDK-TV mast and KRDK-TV. These support the 1966 mast, the 1968 helicopter collision and eight-day outage, the 1997 ice-storm collapse, the temporary 735-foot tower, the 1998 rebuild, the four-foot flagpole and the mast’s unchanged 2,060-foot height.
Warsaw radio mast. This supports the 1974 completion at 2,120 feet and the August 8, 1991 guy-wire failure during a cable swap.
History of the world’s tallest structures, Tallest structures by category and List of tallest structures in the United States by height. These support the record chronology, the 1,749-foot Georgia tower that stood tallest in 1962, the Walnut Grove comparison and the FCC/FAA presumption against towers above 2,000 feet.
Blanchard, North Dakota, North Dakota Highway 18 and North Dakota Highway 200 Alternate (Traill County). These support the town, its size, the county and the highway junction.
Grand Forks Herald, “Tall KVLY tower’s world title in danger”, June 18, 2008. This contemporaneous North Dakota report supports the Burj Dubai’s 2,064-foot height that June and the loss of the title.
Prairie Public, Dakota Datebook, “Tall Tower Two”. This state public-broadcasting account supports the neighboring mast’s collapse-and-rebuild history.
Burj Khalifa, Guinness World Records, Empire State Building facts and figures, the Eiffel Tower’s 2022 height increase and Willis Tower. These support the comparison heights.
North Dakota State Capitol and the North Dakota Office of Management and Budget’s Capitol Complex history. These support the Capitol’s height, story count and 1934 date, and the RDO Building comparison.
Roadtrippers’ KVLY-TV mast listing. This is the source of the fenced-base report. It is a traveler account, not an operator statement, and the article says so.
North Dakota Department of Transportation road conditions and weather resources. This is the responsible official source for current driving conditions.
Reporting notes. Several structural and chronological details here rest on well-referenced encyclopedia entries rather than on primary documents. The mast’s completion date is genuinely contested: this article uses November 8, 1963, the antenna-raising date attributed to a contemporaneous Fargo Forum report, rather than a competing August 1963 date given elsewhere; the Forum and trade-press coverage was not consulted directly. The 9:08 a.m. timestamp for the 1968 helicopter collision is single-sourced to a period newspaper our desk could not open, and is hedged in the text for that reason. The five-mile distance between the two masts is computed from published coordinates rather than stated outright by any one source.
Tower, ownership and broadcast details last checked September 2, 2026. Spot an error? Read our editorial standards and corrections policy.