The old NSS Annapolis, otherwise known as the Naval Communications Station Washington, D.C., Transmitter, at Greenbury Point on the Severn River to the west of Annapolis, is not a place where one might expect to begin a discussion on monuments. But sometimes the most curious and intriguing of things are found in overlooked and unexpected places.
The three red-and-white radio towers on the wooded peninsula, once used to communicate with submerged submarines, are the most prominent reminders of what was once a bustling and active radio transmitting facility. Though it is still a gunnery range and part of the NSA Annapolis facility where the Naval Academy's training tenders are docked, most of it has become a nature center. Open fields have replaced field transmitting equipment, and where the busy work of national defense went on, there is now only the work of birds building their nests, and deer foraging in the scrub.