The Quiet Zone

Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence

Stephen Kurczy

• Publisher: Dey Street Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780062945501
• eBook ISBN:
  9780062945518
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

In this riveting account of an area of Appalachia known as the Quiet Zone where cell phones and WiFi are banned, journalist Stephen Kurczy explores the pervasive role of technology in our lives and the innate human need for quiet.

"Captures the complex beauty of a disconnected way of life." — The Nation

With a new afterword to the paperback edition

Deep in the Appalachian Mountains lies the last truly quiet town in America. Green Bank, West Virginia, is a place at once futuristic and old-fashioned: It's home to the Green Bank Observatory, where astronomers search the depths of the universe using the latest technology, while schoolchildren go without WiFi or iPads. With a ban on all devices emanating radio frequencies that might interfere with the observatory's telescopes, Quiet Zone residents live a life free from constant digital connectivity. But a community that on the surface seems idyllic is a place of contradictions, where the provincial meets the seemingly supernatural and quiet can serve as a cover for something darker.

Stephen Kurczy embedded in Green Bank, making the residents of this small Appalachian village his neighbors. He shopped at the town's general store, attended church services, went target shooting with a seven-year-old, square-danced with the locals, sampled the local moonshine. In  The Quiet Zone, he introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters. There is a tech buster patrolling the area for illegal radio waves; "electrosensitives" who claim that WiFi is deadly; a sheriff's department with a string of unsolved murder cases dating back decades; a camp of neo-Nazis plotting their resurgence from a nearby mountain hollow. Amongst them all are the ordinary citizens seeking a simpler way of living. Kurczy asks: Is a less connected life desirable? Is it even possible?

The Quiet Zone is a remarkable work of investigative journalism—at once a stirring ode to place, a tautly wound tale of mystery, and a clarion call to reexamine the role technology plays in our lives.

Part One

Quiet Search

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They found rich, good pasture, and the land was spacious, peaceful, and quiet.

—1 CHRONICLES 4:40

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Chapter One

“Over the Mountain”

DEER CREEK VALLEY WAS DARKENING, the surrounding ring of forested peaks fading into the clouds. Jenna and I had been on the road all day, driving through the Allegheny range of West Virginia and the seemingly abandoned towns of Pocahontas County. Through stretches of thick forest and rolling mountains, the road wound uphill for miles and then careened downward at deadly steep grades. Big-eyed cows stared as we drove by their pastures. Occasionally, we’d see a gas station and think, Oh, there is civilization here.

Just outside the town of Green Bank, I parked alongside a clapboard church—we’d seen more churches than people that day. I got out of the car and crunched over the glazed snow to the Chestnut Ridge Country Inn next door. I knocked—no answer. I turned the knob—the door was locked. On the porch of the colonial home was a chalkboard that read “Welcome Jesse and Jennifer,” dated February 2017. But we were not Jesse and Jennifer, and it was March.

I glanced at Jenna, who appeared increasingly anxious. We had no cell service, no WiFi, and nowhere to sleep. Her iPhone searched in vain for a signal, its status wheel spinning like a compass inside the Bermuda Triangle. A few miles away, a platter-size road sign had vaguely explained the reason for our disconnection: “You Are Now Entering the West Virginia Radio Quiet Zone.” A cat leaped onto the porch and nuzzled my sneaker, oblivious to my unease. I felt like a child in the silent woods, spooked by how loud quiet can be. Feeling untethered and lost, we were struggling to answer a basic question: Where will we sleep tonight?

We climbed back into the car and drove five miles to Henry’s Quick Stop, a gas station that also served as a grocery store, restaurant, and ice-cream parlor, selling everything from scratch-offs to gun ammo in Green Bank, which had an estimated population of 250. It was our third time at Henry’s that afternoon. We’d first pulled in for gas before trying to check into the nearby Boyer Motel, a manila-colored structure that reminded me of the Bates Motel from Psycho; it was closed, perhaps for the best. We’d then returned to Henry’s and gotten directions to the Chestnut Ridge Country Inn. Now back at Henry’s, I asked the bearded attendant where else we might spend the night. He shrugged. Jenna opened a tourist brochure and saw a listing for lodging in Durbin, about ten miles north on the sole road that cut through town.

“Could I call from here?” I asked.

“Go on ahead,” the attendant said, gesturing to a landline beside the register. “Store closes in fifteen minutes. Streets roll up at seven.”

He handed me a heavy phone book. (When had I last used a phone book?) Its thin pages held the names and numbers of Pocahontas County’s 8,200 residents—about one-tenth the population of the New York City neighborhood where we lived. I flipped through and found the number for a place called Station 2.

“We’ve got space,” a woman said over the phone. “But we’re five minutes to closing so you’d better hurry up.”

As we raced through town with a pepperoni pizza from Henry’s, we passed the area’s quiet authority: the Green Bank Observatory, founded in 1956 by the National Science Foundation (NSF). We could see a handful of radio telescopes poking above the trees, the largest a 485-foot-tall tangle of white beams holding a giant dish the size of two football fields. It looked like a washbasin for Godzilla. The telescopes sat at the bottom of a four-mile-long valley surrounded by mountains up to 4,800 feet tall, which created a natural barrier against the outside world’s noise. Operating any electrical equipment within ten miles of here was illegal if it caused interference to the telescopes, punishable by a state fine of fifty dollars per day. Surrounding that ten-mile radius, a thirteen-thousand-square-mile National Radio Quiet Zone—an area larger than the combined landmass of Connecticut and Massachusetts—further limited cell service and all kinds of wireless communications systems. The restrictions were based on a simple premise: To listen, we have to hear. To unlock the mysteries of the universe, we have to be quiet.

The physical and bureaucratic barriers isolated an already remote area. In terms of the absence of man-made electronic noise, no other modern-day community was considered as quiet. A handful of other radio quiet zones existed worldwide, but they were in essentially uninhabited areas. Green Bank was a living, breathing community—though sparsely populated, to be sure. Three-fifths of the surrounding county of Pocahontas was state or federal forest. Its 941 square miles had a total of three traffic lights and three official towns. (Green Bank, as an unincorporated community, was not among them.) Residents shared one weekly newspaper, one high school, and a couple roadside telephone booths. The population density of about nine people per square mile was the lowest in West Virginia and one of the lowest anywhere east of the Mississippi River. Going to Walmart was a hundred-mile round trip that required traversing some of the Mountain State’s tallest peaks. Outsiders were considered “flatlanders” or “come-heres.” Locals were “mountain people.” History crept forward in a place like this; many residents knew which great-great-grandparent settled the land and on which side their great-grandfather fought during the Civil War.

Earlier in the day, Jenna and I had stopped at a scenic overlook of the Monongahela National Forest, an expanse of rolling hills and layered mountain ridges covered in pine trees speckled white with snow. While West Virginia was known for its mining industry, this area of the state largely lacked coal, which had spared it from land-scarring strip-mining and mountaintop removal practices. The evergreen forests were thick with mountain laurel and, in warmer months, teeming with mushrooms, ramps, ginseng, goldenseal, and sassafras. The county was the source of eight major rivers flowing to the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. It was a land with evocative names like Stony Bottom, Clover Lick, Thorny Creek, Briery Knob, and Green Bank, with that last name holding an almost mythical allure as a place where the grass was greener and life was fuller. Four hours from Washington, D.C., Green Bank sounded to Jenna and me like a modern-day Walden that could free us from the exasperating demands of being always online and always reachable. Visiting was to be a respite from our digital lives.

A truck had parked beside us at the scenic overlook. An older man got out and waved. His wife, Patty, sat in the truck with their two dogs. We all started chatting. I asked the man, Les, if there was ever a moment when he’d wished for cell service. He launched into a half-hour tale about going hunting, slicing his hand to the bone as he gutted a deer, and then trudging miles to the nearest road while he bled through a makeshift tourniquet. “If I’d had a cellphone, I could have had a truck waiting for me,” Les said. “But other than that time . . .” By this point I’d shoved my freezing hands deep inside my pockets, though the chill didn’t seem to bother Les, who was chain-smoking Marlboros with gloveless hands; he’d smoked so many Marlboros over the years that he’d purchased his red Marlboro-branded jacket with points accumulated from the cigarette packs. No devices could interrupt our conversation, nobody could zone out on a smartphone. Before we parted, Les and Patty had invited us to their house for spaghetti and meatballs. (When had I last been invited to a stranger’s home for dinner?)

We pulled into Durbin, a bygone logging town on the Greenbrier River. An old railway track was saddled with rusting boxcars. A row of boarded-up storefronts held our destination: Station 2, a combination hair salon, greasy spoon, and four-room motel. We parked in an empty lot. As we trudged up a set of wooden stairs to the entryway, a wiry man with translucent eyes that matched his pale complexion swung open the door and stared hard at me.

“We’re closed,” he grumbled.

“Thanks,” I said, “but they’re expecting us.”

“No,” he said. “We’re closed.”

“It’s all right,” I said, skirting around him, “we’re sleeping here.”

Shouldn’t have said that, I thought.

IN THE FOYER OF STATION 2, a blond woman stood behind a cash register, which was perched on a glass cabinet filled with hunting knives and boxes of gun ammo. She explained that the restaurant was owned by the local fire chief, hence the decorative fire hose and thick bunker coat hanging on one wall. Charging us $77.28 for the night, she gave us a room key and led us through the kitchen and up a dark stairway. I mentioned that we’d tried to stay at the Boyer Motel, but it seemed abandoned.

“They don’t even have WiFi,” she said.

“There’s WiFi here?” I asked, the excitement in my voice betraying my craving to get online.

“It’s free under the name ‘Station 2.’”

While we were still within the Quiet Zone and without cellphone reception, we were now far enough from Green Bank’s telescopes for the legal use of WiFi, apparently. We were given a room with a double bed and flat-screen television. Before my bag hit the floor, I was logged on to the internet with my iPod. Soon my laptop was also connected, releasing a flood of emails and alerts that I’d missed over the previous twenty-four hours. The radio silence was broken. Jenna scrolled on her iPhone. We had teleported into separate worlds.

“We should check out that bar in town,” Jenna said after a while, referencing a joint that we’d spotted on the drive into Durbin.

I didn’t look up from my laptop.

“Let’s go for one drink,” she prodded—not that she needed a nightcap, just that she thought we should do more with our evening than stare at tiny screens.

We walked up the deserted street to Al’s Upper Inn, the only establishment still open at the ungodly hour of 8:30 P.M. All conversations stopped as we entered. Jenna is Korean and I look like a nerdy white journalist, which is to say that we looked like outsiders. A half dozen people stared at us.

“We’re not from around here,” I said awkwardly.

“No kidding,” someone replied. Chuckles.

We eased onto barstools and made small talk. I mentioned we were in town to visit the astronomy observatory. “Better get there before it closes,” someone muttered, alluding to the facility’s financial troubles. Several couples stared at a sports game on the wall-mounted TV. Two middle-aged men stood up to take a turn at a billiards table, one of them sporting a KKK tattoo on his biceps. He told me his name was J.R. and, unprompted, added that he hated the Puerto Rican migrants who were stealing local jobs. After his pool game, J.R. purchased six bottles of Budweiser to go before peeling away on a four-wheeler with a woman on back.

A stern-looking bartender hovered by the beer taps. I mentioned that I was fascinated with the local way of life, how the area felt like stepping back in time. The bartender rolled her eyes as if to say, You don’t know the half of it. She told us of a saying, “Goin’ over the mountain,” which was when someone was heading out and would be unavailable by cellphone. We were way, way over the mountain.

For me, coming here was something of a pilgrimage. I hadn’t owned a cellphone in nearly a decade, even as everyone around me increasingly did, from my elderly grandmother to my prepubescent niece and nephew. More than ever, I felt that I was in an ideological battle against a culture of constant connectivity, fighting the pressure to be like everyone else and get a smartphone. I had conceded to getting an iPod at some point over the years, and even with that pared-down device I sometimes felt as tech-addled as anyone, which was partly why I didn’t want to take the next step of getting an iPhone. Was this remote area of West Virginia the last place where I could resist its influence? The last place where I could fit in without a smartphone?

IN A SENSE, my journey to the Quiet Zone began in 2009, when I got rid of my first and last cellphone. I had been living in Cambodia for two years, working as a reporter for the Cambodia Daily newspaper and traveling around the region to cover stories. My cellphone was so often at hand that it became an extension of myself. I slept with it. I ate with it. It was a social lifeline. It was also a source of anxiety. In need of a last-minute quote, desperate for a callback from a source, I would stare at the device, willing it to comply. I heard phantom rings and felt phantom vibrations. I was as dependent on my phone as a baby on a pacifier—a real condition, as the marketing professors Shiri Melumad and Michel Pham found in the 2017 research paper “Understanding the Psychology of Smartphone Usage: The Adult Pacifier Hypothesis.” The day I left Cambodia, I dropped my flip phone in a garbage can. I wanted a break.

Back in the United States, I put off getting a replacement. It was a decision based on frugality—I was reluctant to sign a contract that would lock me into a payment plan. Weeks without a cellphone turned into months, then years. I worked for the Christian Science Monitor in Boston, then moved to New York City to report on finance, then relocated to Brazil as a foreign correspondent, all without a cellphone. I signed up for a free Google “phone number” that allowed me to make calls using my laptop. I used Skype. I got an iPod Touch for podcasts. In emergency situations, I borrowed others’ cellphones. Once, on a 150-mile bicycle ride, I used a stranger’s device to notify my family that I’d be arriving hours late and after dark, using it in the same way that people once utilized roadside pay phones, until they disappeared because everybody but me got a cellphone. I recognize that mobile devices can be useful. I just think they should be used sparingly and mostly in emergencies.

Family, friends, and colleagues began to question whether I was disconnected from the modern world or from reality. Employers grew irritated. “Get a cellphone and get on Facebook,” an editor once told me. I declined both directives, but I agreed to at least open a Twitter account to “promote” our stories. My mother was frustrated that she couldn’t keep tabs on me the way she did my smartphone-toting sisters. “I just worry about you,” she’d say, in the way that mothers do. The more pressure I got, the more I dug in my heels. Why was the onus on me to change? After all, I was the normal person, by measure of how long humans had lived without cellphones. Wasn’t I free to not have a cellphone?

I started to see it as a matter of personal liberty, a kind of Fourth Amendment fight for privacy and “the right to be let alone,” as phrased by the Boston lawyers Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in a famous Harvard Law Review article from 1890. Back then, the two lawyers railed against “recent inventions and business methods” such as “instantaneous photographs” and “numerous mechanical devices” that “invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life.” What would they think of smartphones and their systematic abuse of our attention and invasion of privacy? I saw myself as a disconnection crusader, a Don Quixote for the digital era, toiling against the tyranny of always-on mobile devices. (Never mind that Don Quixote was delusional.)

My mission was as futile as fighting windmills. Cellphones hardly existed two decades ago. By 2019, eight in ten American adults owned a smartphone; in my own demographic of Americans aged thirty to forty-nine, 92 percent owned smartphones. By 2020, 5.2 billion people worldwide owned a cellphone. Whenever I walked into a public restroom, a guy at the neighboring stall held a smartphone in his free hand. A colleague so vigorously swiped and typed on her iPhone that she injured her wrist and came into the office wearing a brace. My mother, a public school teacher, was encouraged to tweet from the classroom. My father, a minister, contended with congregants answering their phones during church services. Jenna carried two smartphones, one personal and one provided by her employer so she could be reached any time of any day. Seven decades after Congress set the workweek at forty hours through the Fair Labor Standards Act, it seemed time to establish new rules to prevent our jobs from pervading our lives via smartphones. “You can’t miss nobody in 2017,” the comedian Chris Rock said during a stand-up routine that year. “Not really. You can say it, but you don’t really miss the motherfucker, because you’re with them all the time. They’re in your fuckin’ pocket.”

My refusal to swim with the digital current made me an outsider, a fringe character unable to accept the inevitable march of technological progress. Without a smartphone, I couldn’t use Uber, Venmo, or WhatsApp. By choice, I also opted out o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Map
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue: “To Anyone Who Will Listen”
• Part One: Quiet Search
• Part Two: Quiet Discovery
• Part Three: Quiet End?
• Epilogue: “Masters of Social Distancing”
• Afterword
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Author
• Praise for The Quiet Zone
• Copyright
• About the Publisher