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 the small town of Blanchard, 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 still standing in the world. Its record history connects this patch of prairie with a fallen mast in Poland, a short-lived flagpole on the tower next door and the skyscraper that rose above them all in Dubai.
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
- Completed: 1963; accounts differ on the precise completion date
- 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
- Purpose: television broadcasting for the Fargo–Grand Forks area
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 station history places the antenna raising on November 8, 1963; the separate mast history gives an August completion date. Both are secondary accounts, and our desk has not yet resolved the difference against the original newspaper record. The reported construction cost was roughly $500,000. 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.
2008. The Burj Dubai, later the Burj Khalifa, passed KVLY’s height while still under construction. The Grand Forks Herald’s June report recorded the new tower at 2,064 feet.
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: the usual chronology gives KVLY about 28 years at the top, divided by the Warsaw mast and the neighbor’s brief flagpole episode. Dubai ended the final world-record stretch in 2008.
Why it lost 76 feet in 2019
The Skyscraper Center’s original record gives a tip height of 2,063 feet. Its separate 2019 renovation record gives 1,987 feet (605.6 meters). The difference is 76 feet.
Station and mast histories attribute that reduction to removal of the top VHF antenna during the 2019 work. KVLY also changed its digital channel during that year’s spectrum repack. A channel reassignment and removal of an antenna are separate events; the available records do not establish the removed antenna’s exact service history.
The shorter mast is still nearly 1.4 times the tip height of 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.
The height comparison is clear in the Skyscraper Center’s KRDK record: 2,060 feet for KRDK, about 73 feet above KVLY’s post-2019 tip. Published structure rankings identify the KRDK-TV mast near Galesburg as the tallest guyed mast 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.
On February 14, 1968, 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, ending that brief lead.
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. Use the station’s current viewer information to confirm channel availability.
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.
Plan for a view from a public road. This is an active broadcast structure on private property, with no verified public tour or viewing platform. Do not enter its driveway or cross a gate; stop only where parking is lawful and clear of traffic.
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 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?
The top antenna was removed during work in 2019. The Skyscraper Center records a change from 2,063 feet to 1,987 feet. The earlier claim that the antenna had been unused for exactly a decade was not established by the records reviewed here.
Can you visit the KVLY-TV mast?
You can see it from public roads near Blanchard. There is no verified public access to the private tower property or a staffed visitor attraction. Stay on public roads and stop only where parking is lawful and clear of traffic. 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
Partial check, September 8, 2026: the three mast heights were rechecked against the Skyscraper Center, the antenna-use claim was narrowed, and roadside access wording was clarified. The detailed historical chronology retains its September 2 check date.
The Council on Vertical Urbanism’s Skyscraper Center records the original KVLY mast, the 2019 renovation and KRDK. These independently confirm the 2,063-, 1,987- and 2,060-foot heights on September 8, 2026. Direct federal ASR access was unavailable during that check.
FCCInfo, a commercial lookup service for antenna structure registrations: ASR 1046244, the KVLY-TV mast, and ASR 1038731, the KRDK-TV mast. These pages reproduce registration information; they are not FCC-hosted pages. Direct federal-record verification remains a reporting follow-up.
KVLY-TV mast and KVLY-TV. These secondary compilations supply the construction account, builders, defective-steel delay, antenna-topping and in-service dates, the reported 2019 antenna removal, ownership and the station’s call-sign history. The unresolved completion dates are disclosed above; these compilations do not establish the removed antenna’s exact service history.
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 current published mast rankings.
Blanchard, North Dakota, North Dakota Highway 18 and North Dakota Highway 200 Alternate (Traill County). These support the town, county and 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. The state source supports the Capitol’s height, total floor count and 1934 date; the encyclopedia supplies 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 precise completion date remains unresolved between August and November 1963 in the secondary accounts; the Forum and trade-press coverage was not consulted directly. A previously included crash timestamp and an unsupported global flag-height claim were removed on September 4, 2026. The record wording was also corrected to distinguish the tallest standing structure from the tallest structure ever built. The five-mile distance between the two masts is computed from published coordinates rather than stated outright by any one source.
Full historical check: September 2, 2026. Scope and source-label corrections made September 4; heights, antenna wording and roadside guidance partially rechecked September 8 as described above. Spot an error? Read our editorial standards and corrections policy.