Spies in Gospel Swamp

Looking east on Edinger Ave from the Santa Ana River. Mystery facility is on the right. (Photo courtesy Douglas McIntosh)

From the 1940s into the 1960s, Orange Countians scratched their heads over a secretive facility – poorly disguised as farm – at 2914 W. Edinger Avenue. It took up a massive area at the southwest corner of Edinger and Fairview St., in the part of Santa Ana once known as Gospel Swamp. Today that land is occupied by Centennial Park, Hector Godinez High School, and the Heritage Museum of Orange County.

 

It featured a 110-acre antenna farm with twenty-five 300-foot relay towers spread across an expanse of flat farmland along the Santa Ana River. At the center of the parcel was a large wood-frame “farmhouse” surrounded by numerous smaller outbuildings. All of this was encircled by a fence marked, “'No trespassing, government property.” From the air, it all just looked like a farm, albeit with many long shadows cast by the antennas. Many sensed that war was on the horizon, and the camouflaging of the facility and the levels of secrecy and security that would soon surround reflected that.

An early aerial view of the site, from Electronics magazine.

Officially, this facility was the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Santa Ana Primary Monitoring Station, which watched over (listened over?) the airwaves to ensure adherence to their regulations. But from the beginning, it was also one of the many auxiliary stations of the joint Radio intelligence Center, which had been established in San Francisco in early 1942 by the Army (Department of War), the Navy, and the FCC's National Defense Operations Section.

Their equipment was so sensitive that two such stations working together (often Santa Ana worked in tandem with a sister station in Portland) could track the exact location of a radio-equipped police car in Australia.

The FBI had already expressed serious concerns about 5th column propaganda broadcasts over what we’d now call “pirate radio.” But the Center’s primary focus was Japanese military and intelligence throughout the Pacific region. At least a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, they developed these monitoring stations across the country to track the enemies of the United States and listen in on their radio communications.

The federal government first acquired the land on Edinger from rancher and Santa Ana Planning Commission Chairman William F. Croddy and his wife, Marine M. Croddy, on June 6, 1941. The feds built their monitoring station there, beginning later that summer. At least the first phase was built by Santa Ana contractor Oscar T. Moore.

Equipment inside the station, 1947 (From Electronics magazine)

Former Heritage Museum Director of Education Adam England gathered as much historical information as he could about the property around 2008, including numerous first-hand accounts. “The ‘farmhouse’ was a two-story affair, made of thick cement, with three additional stories underground,” England said. “Paul Reardon, one of the early founders of the museum, wanted to put his office there [shortly before it was torn down] but was refused.”

Soon after the land was purchased in 1941, Santa Ana farmer Stephen Griset sent the FCC a written request to rent the land to grow winter hay crops "such as oats, wheat, barley or rye grass" to feed his 100 head of dairy cattle. The government agreed to rent Griset the use of the land for that purpose at $2 per acre. This step eliminated the serious fire hazard represented by the tall weeds which would otherwise grow around the facilities and equipment if it remained untended. Moreover, these actively tended fields, along with the “farmhouse” building, making the illusion of a farm mostly true.

Few reports of activity at the monitoring station made it to the public. An early exception was word that they were listening to signals sent from Hamburg, Germany (6,000 miles away) to Hitler's spies in the U.S.  By the end of the war, thirty-three spies were arrested based on this program. 

But that was the tip of the iceberg. Additional examples were provided in a 1952 Los Angeles Times article: "During World War II, a physiotherapy outfit in a medical building was found to be doubling as an illicit radio transmitter. Special cunning was required to discover that a clarinet player in a Berlin orchestra broadcasting to this country was varying his tempo to send messages to German agents in America. What seemingly is pesky static on a broadcast from England may be something else. What is there to keep a foreign enemy from making recordings of static and broadcasting them on the British program wavelength? A Churchill speech might even be used to camouflage coded signals from Stalin."

Aerial photo of the center of the station, 1947.

Being on the west coast, all signs point to Japanese activity being the Santa Ana station’s primary focus during the war. But even less about those secretive duties ever came to light. However, the late historian Wayne Gibson of Olive once told fellow O.C. Historical Commissioner Don Dobmeier that the monitoring station was "where the Japanese code was broken" during the war. 

But it's certain that the Santa Ana station was doing far more than that to thwart the Imperial Japanese war machine. By way of example, a declassified 1944 report from FCC Radio Intelligence Division Chief G. E. Sterling shows that the Primary Monitoring Stations at San Leandro, California and Portland, Oregon alone had already taken bearings on 871 Japanese radio sources outside the United States. Their breakout of Japanese broadcast sources monitored and located from those facilities was as follows:

• Naval (193 stations)
• Army (45)
• Military Attache (1)
• Diplomatic (17)
• Weather (10)
• Shortwave broadcast (9)
• Point-to-Point (16)
• Point-to-Point in Occupied Territory (8)
• Other Japanese (572)

It stands to reason that the Santa Ana’s station was having similar success.

As of July 1941, William E. Downing was supervisor at the Santa Ana Primary Monitoring Station, and James Homay was his assistant. At that point, there were eleven primary stations in the program, from Alaska to Hawaii to Maryland to Puerto Rico, as well as more than 70 secondary stations.

There are rumors that the Santa Ana facility was also part of the operations and facilities of the OSS (the precursor to the CIA), which had a significant presence in Orange County during the war.

Image from the Los Angeles Times, 7-20-1952.

After the war, normal peacetime FCC monitoring operations continued at the Santa Ana Primary Monitoring Station, as it did at FCC facilities across the nation. William J. Hoffert took over as the engineer in charge at Santa Ana and would stay for at least the next sixteen years, as did most of his eleven assistants. The mood relaxed a bit. And in 1947 the station’s assistant engineer, Alfred K. Robinson, even wrote an article for Electronics magazine, explaining how some of the FCC equipment worked and showing both interior and exterior views of the facility. 

By the early 1950s thirteen people worked there in shifts, around the clock. But in addition to playing "radio traffic cop," the facility was once again ramping up their national security functions, recording broadcasts from Russia and other parts of the world.

At the time of the 1952 Times article, Hoffert and Robinson couldn't talk about the station's intelligence activities. Instead, they focused on domestic success stories. Unclassified stories highlighted in the article included…

• The navigational instruments failed on a large hospital plane flying wounded soldiers from Korea. The plane had become further disoriented in a thick fog. Santa Ana was among the six listening stations called upon to "get a fix" on the plane. They gave the pilot regular reports on his own position and saved the lives of all aboard.
• They prevented the burning of at least one yacht at sea.
• A fighter pilot flying from Chicago to Denver became disoriented, overshot his goal, and was nearly out of fuel. He planned to bail out, but the Santa Ana station (and others) tracked him and let him know he was over the middle of Lake Michigan. They then directed him to a safe place to land. 
• They also helped with local incidents. For instance, they helped direct a lost rescue crew to a plane crash site in a local canyon. They also broke a code that was being used to relay race results to bookies via radio before bets were placed, putting a bunch of crooks out of business.

Indeed, for a few years after World War II, these kinds of non-intelligence-related tasks became the norm at the station. Longtime local resident Brad Weber said, "I knew people -- civilians -- who were prominent in the communications and radio field and were allowed to visit the facility prior to the 1950s."

1955 aerial photo of the facility. Note what appears to be a radar dome to the right.

But the facility again became more secretive and heavily guarded as the Cold War heated up. Santa Anan Lee Heinly related a story from his childhood, from around 1955, that was typical of locals’ experiences in the mid-1950s through late 1960s: "We decided to take out pellet guns out to the river and hunt mice and rats. We parked our bikes at the bottom of the dip in the sand and proceeded to walk west down the river to see what we could find. This placed us parallel with the antennas. Then, suddenly, we were confronted with a couple of men with guns and badges and were told that we were not to be in that area, and that it would be best if we left. They said they were government guards, not police, and we would not be reported if we didn't return. We never did."

Among the spookier Cold War uses of the massive antenna array was “missile guidance,” said England. No further evidence has come to light on this matter, although it seems likely that this would have amounted to some sort of support for the various local Nike missile installations.

The monitoring station also tracked at least some orbiting satellites. In fact, Santa Ana was the second U.S. station to notice the first Sputnik, hours before Russia announced that they'd launched it.

In its final years, in the early 1960s, the level of secrecy at the station seemed to wane again. Among other things, it was clear that the current generation of Soviet agents in the U.S. weren’t very interested in broadcasting via radio back to Mother Russia. And meanwhile, the FCC was beginning to use more modern equipment for their domestic duties.

1959 aerial photo of what would become Centennial Park.

It’s unclear precisely how long the Santa Ana Primary Monitoring Station remained in operation. It was still functioning in January 1964, but by August 1966 the government was planning to surplus the site and the local school district was already making plans for its reuse.

"It was owned by the government until June 15, 1967, when it was donated to the Santa Ana Unified School District,” said England. “The remaining ninety-nine acres were given to form Centennial Park and [an annex of] Santa Ana College sometime after that period. The [Santa Ana Unified School District built] Mitchell School on the grounds, but the rest sat unused. They were informed they would lose the land if they didn’t do anything with it of an educational nature. That was when the Exploratory Learning Center, [later the Discovery Museum of Orange County and now the Heritage Museum of Orange County,] was formed around 1980."

We may never know how many events of tremendous historical importance took place in that farmhouse-shaped bunker in Gospel Swamp. Until more information comes to light, its history will have to remain woefully incomplete.

Thanks to Doug McIntosh, Greg Rankin, Adam England, Lee “CoxPilot” Heinly, Brad Weber and Don Dobmeier for their assistance. This article was heavily updated and expanded in April 2026.

PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

• B-30418, 22 Comp. Gen. 563, U.S. Government Accountability Office, 12-21-1942, https://www.gao.gov/products/b-30418
• Barton, William S. "Fingers 6000 Miles Long Reach Out, Tag Radio Spies," Los Angeles Times, 7-20-1952, pg 80.
• "Defense Operations of FCC Includes Personnel of 515," Broadcasting, Vol. 21, No. 3, 7-21-1941
• Dibble, Allen C., “G-Men Watch Wave Lengths,” Santa Ana Register, 2-24-1941, pg 13.
• "Ham Radio Jammer Is Arrested," Long Beach Press-Telegram, 1-13-1964, pg 13
• "Let Contract For Monitor Station," Santa Ana Register 7-8-1941, pg 1.
• "Planners Envision Sprawling City," The Register, 12-3-1965, pg 39
• Ridgway, Charles "Santa Ana 'Kilocycle Kops' Police U.S. Air," Long Beach Press-Telegram, 3-25-1962, pg 1
• Robinson, Alfred K. "FCC Frequency Measurement Techniques," Electronics, June 1947. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Electronics/40s/Electronics-1947-06a.pdf
• "SA Schools Seek Federal Property," The Register, 8-3-1966, pg 43
• Sterling, G. E., Chief of Radio Intelligence Division Chief, Memorandum to Chief Engineer, FCC, 3-25-1944, https://jerrykang.net/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2010/10/Ex-Y.pdf