Every July 12 since 1999, volunteers at 17400 Sir Francis Drake Blvd in Inverness reactivate the original transmitters of KPH, the "Wireless Giant of the Pacific." This year's ceremony is also a memorial: Denice Stoops, the station's first female commercial Morse operator, died May 1.

The building at 17400 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in Inverness doesn't announce itself. It's an Art Deco structure RCA put up between 1929 and 1931 as the receiving half of a maritime radio system whose transmitters sat 18 miles south in Bolinas, at the original American Marconi Company site from 1913. Together they were KPH — "the Wireless Giant of the Pacific," as RCA called it — the shore station that ships across the North Pacific and Indian Ocean called for most of the 20th century to send and receive messages.

KPH didn't start in Inverness. It started at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, around 1906, operated by the Marconi Company under the call sign "PH." The earthquake and fire took the hotel and most of the city that year, and the station moved — eventually absorbed by RCA, eventually settled into the Marin coast. Commercial operations wound down by 1997. On July 12, 1999, Globe Wireless — which then held the license — sent the station's final commercial transmission: We wish you fair winds and following seas. Then it went quiet.

Richard Dillman and Tom Horsfall drove out to the site that same day, according to a memorial account published July 9 by the newsletter Long Wharf. They expected to find the building vandalized. Instead: receivers still on, coffee cups on the tables, a carousel of radiograms for ships that would never call to claim them. They formed the Maritime Radio Historical Society on the spot, persuaded the National Park Service — which acquired the site in 1999 as part of Point Reyes National Seashore — to let them restore and operate it, and have been doing both ever since. The society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, reported $130,880 in revenue for fiscal year 2024; its officers receive no compensation.

Every July 12 at 5:01 p.m. — one minute after the 1999 transmission ended — MRHS operators fire up the original transmitters and receivers and begin keying Morse code. They call it Night of Nights. It runs until 11 p.m. Amateur operators can participate from anywhere in the world on K6KPH frequencies; in past years, radiograms have arrived from New Zealand and Europe. Doors open at the Inverness receiving building at 3 p.m.

This year's transmission carries a specific absence. Denice Stoops — known by her Morse handle DA — died May 1, according to the Reddit post by a crew member of the SS Jeremiah O'Brien who knew her. She was the first female commercial Morse code operator at KPH, hired by station manager Ed Brennan in 1979 after leaving the Coast Guard's master station NMC, which operated directly adjacent to KPH at Point Reyes. Her fist — the individual cadence a Morse operator develops over years of keying — was, by the accounts in Long Wharf's memorial, clean and unhurried. She also operated the radio room of the SS Jeremiah O'Brien, the preserved World War II Liberty ship berthed in San Francisco. Dillman's memorial on the MRHS homepage ends: "I know we all wish Denice fair winds and following seas and know that she still stands watch on 600m" — 600 meters, 500 kilohertz, the old maritime distress frequency that no one monitors commercially anymore.

On Saturday, the transmitters in Bolinas will activate. The receivers at 17400 Sir Francis Drake will listen. The signal will go out on the same frequencies KPH has used for decades, out to whatever ships and amateur operators are listening across the Pacific. DA's key will be quiet. The watch continues anyway.