Old City Hall Electromagnetic Wave Contraption -- Cedar Hill TX - Signs of History on Waymarking.com

The utilitarian 1962 X-shaped former City Hall for Cedar Hill Texas is now the home of Babe's Chicken Dinner House, a local southern food and fried chicken restaurant.

Two signs of history and a local Cedar Hill historical site medallion decorate the grounds of the old City Hall, where you can get a great meal after taking in the history here.

The sign reads as follows:

"OLD CITY HALL
ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVE CONTRAPTION

The tiny settlement of Cedar Hill was established in 1846. Abraham and William Hart donated the land for the town and the square in 1847. The streets around town square became a hub of local government, business and social activity, but the actual Townsquare piece of property remained undeveloped until 1962, over 100 years after the land was donated.

In a controversial move, city officials proposed actually utilizing the, by that time, sacred ground, as the site for a multipurpose municipal services building. On June 21, 1962 the city dedicated the newly shared facility on Cedar Hill Town Square, in the shadow of the towers, that housed government offices, the library, a modern three-bay fire station, and the state of the art communication contraption you see here, that sat atop the X-shaped building.

The central structure, a miniature version of the towers, initially supported the fire department warning sirens, but the sirens only brought firefighters as far as the station. The task of communicating the location of the emergency to firefighters failed to then City Secretary Marie Vincent, who would hang out the window and yelled the address of the fire. Originally twice as tall, a gust of wind blew the antenna over in 1992 and only half made it back atop the building.

As technology advanced the tower began sprouting peculiar shaped paraphernalia, but in City Hall below it was business as usual; dogs tied to the porch, a bag of dead fish on the door, blue-eyed water bill payments, typical government stuff. Then on a Sunday evening in August 2000, Dr. Jannay Valdez of De Soto sighted a UFO near the towers, speeding through the sky toward town. Although Police Chief Steve Rhodes reported no other UFO sightings that night, Doctor Valdez was undeterred, reporting the incident to the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico.

Babe’s founder, Paul Vineyard, has meticulously preserved the contraption to ward off marauding chicken hawks."

Group that erected the marker: City of Cedar Hill URL of a web site with more information about the history mentioned on the sign: [Web Link] Address of where the marker is located. Approximate if necessary: 200 S. Main Street Cedar Hill, TX

Visit Instructions:
Take a picture of the marker, preferably including yourself or your GPSr in the photo. A very detailed description of your visit may be substituted for a photo. In any case please provide a description of your visit. A description of only "Visited" or "Saw it while on vacation" by anyone other than the person creating the waymark may be deleted by the waymark owner or the category officers.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log   02/17/2018 Benchmark Blasterz visited it