Highlands Air Force Station Highlands Air Force Station was a Navesink Highlands military installation in Middletown Township near the borough of Highlands , New Jersey . The station provided ground - controlled interception radar coverage as part of the Lashup Radar Network and the Semi - Automatic Ground Environment network , as well as providing radar coverage for the Highlands Army Air Defense Site . The site ' s is now the Rocky Point section in Hartshorne Woods Park of the Monmouth County Parks System . History . Early installations . The Navesink Highlands had a sea navigation beacon in 1746 , and the Twin Lights north tower was built in 1828 . The New Jersey Highlands were used for antebellum flag signaling experiments that communicated with Fort Tomkins on Staten Island in 1859 . Guglielmo Marconi had a 1899 radio station on the hill near the north tower . Seacoast defense and 1930s radar testing . In World War I , a mortar battery was placed on the Navsink Highlands for seacoast defense . By 1933 , Harold A . Zahl ' s radio range experiments had begun from the Twin Lights lighthouse , and an August 1935 US Army Signal Corps radar test at the lighthouse allowed a searchlight beam to track an aircraft . An SCR - 268 radar assembled in August 1938 was demonstrated at the " Twin Lights , N . J . " lighthouse in 1939 . Battery Isaac N . Lewis on the hill was a World War II seacoast defense site . Twin Lights station . The " Twin Lights station " was an Army radar site with a control center . The station was used for a November 1939 demonstration to the Secretary of War in which radar data was networked from the local SCR - 270 radar and , via telephone , from one in Connecticut that both tracked a Mitchel Field B - 17 bomber formation . From 1942 - 5 , the site had a World War II Westinghouse SCR - 271 radar for early warning and in 1948 , Air Defense Command activated the 646th Aircraft Control Squadron at Highlands AFS with a General Electric AN / CPS - 6 Radar providing data to the Manual Control Center at Roslyn Air Warning Station , New York . In 1955 a General Electric AN / FPS - 8 Radar for medium range surveillance was installed southwest of the lighthouse ( later converted to a General Electric AN / GPS - 3 Radar that remained until 1960 . ) By 1957 , the site was and an additional area was planned for Army housing . In 1958 , a height finder General Electric AN / FPS - 6 Radar was added to the site . SAGE site . In 1958 , Highlands Air Force Station began providing data to Semi Automatic Ground Environment ( SAGE ) direction center DC - 01 at McGuire AFB which had Air Defense Command interceptor aircraft and CIM - 10 Bomarc surface - to - air missiles . In September 1959 , Highlands was the first site with a General Electric AN / FPS - 7 Radar for long range surveillance . ( A U . S . Army Signal Missile Master Support Detachment provided site maintenance . ) Texas Tower 4 ( call sign " Dora " ) was an offshore radar annex of Highlands operated by a 646th flight from 1959 until it collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean in 1961 , killing 28 people . In 1960 the Air Force installed an AN / FPS - 6 B height - finder radar at Highlands which , along with the AN / FPS - 6 , had been replaced by 1963 with AN / FPS - 26 A and AN / FPS - 90 sets . The United States Secretary of Defense announced on 20 November 1964 , that the Air Force operations would be closed . The Highlands Army Air Defense Site ( HAADS ) was established east of the station in 1958 with a Missile Master nuclear bunker which used the USAF radar data . HAADS assumed control of the USAF station after the DoD had announced its closure for July 1966 ( the USAF squadron inactivated on 1 July 1966 ) . Army use of the former USAF radars ended in 1974 when the Nike missile program ended , USAF structures were demolished in the early 1990s , and a few building foundations remain in a small clearing within the site ' s overgrowth of vegetation .