Holmdel Will Name Park For Horn Antenna Researcher, Resident

HOLMDEL, NJ — A rare moment in the history of any town will be happening in Holmdel on April 20.

That is the day that a 35-acre property on Crawford Hill - now owned by Holmdel - will be named Dr. Robert Wilson Park in honor of one of the scientists who worked there, using the landmark Horn antenna.

It was that antenna, then owned by Bell Labs, that was instrumental in the discovery by Wilson and fellow researcher Arno Penzias of the cosmic background radiation of the Big Bang - an event 14 billion years ago considered to be the origin of the universe.

The dedication will take place at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 20, Mayor Rocco Impreveduto said on Wednesday.

After more than a year of negotiations and public input and urging of local environmental groups, the township filed a declaration of taking on Jan. 23 in Superior Court. The property and antenna were purchased from a private owner who had considered a housing development on a portion of the site.

And it is now ensured that the Horn antenna, located at the top of the hill that is the highest point in Monmouth County, will exist in a setting so that "future generations will be able to marvel" at the significance of the structure, Impreveduto said earlier this year.

He announced then that the site will be developed into a park and educational center and will be named in honor of Wilson, a Holmdel resident. Wilson and Penzias in 1978 shared a Nobel Prize in physics for their research. Penzias was 90 when he died Jan. 22 in San Francisco, according to his New York Times obituary.

Monmouth County's Board of County Commissioners has announced a $3.562 million county grant to help fund the acquisition of the park.

Holmdel paid a net $4.75 million for the site. Commissioner Deputy Director Ross Licitra said the grant is part of the Commissioners’ Municipal Land Preservation Incentive Program, created in 2023 to assist Monmouth County towns with land preservation projects.

Also, Rep. Andy Kim, D-NJ, has announced that Congress approved a $500,000 federal grant toward the purchase and improvement of the site. The Horn antenna is a National Historic Landmark.

Right now, some basic steps are being taken to protect the site, according to Township Administrator Jay Delaney.

The work at the park property has been limited so far to general cleanup, minor repairs and securing the structures, and driveway access paving, he said. Visitors to the dedication will be able to walk around the area until 3 p.m., but then the site will be closed to the public pending various repairs and site work, the mayor said.

Broader plans for the site will the topic of discussions for at least the rest of this year as long-range planning gets underway.

Groups such as Citizens for Informed Land Use and others have already prepared concepts for the site and have advocated for public input. You can read more on that here.

And Fred Carl of Ocean Grove, who has addressed the committee previously and is a founder of the InfoAge Museum in Wall that focuses on computer and communications history and technology, also offered advice.

He said a visitors center development team has many local and international resources available to develop the center. The Association of Science and Technology Center (ASTC.org) "has available great resources for the team," he said previously.

It was Carl, early on in the public comments supporting preservation of the site, who dubbed Crawford Hill and the Horn antenna "a shrine to cosmology," one of the many moments when the public expressed a reverence for the now-silent structure.