Unalaska, AK – Last week, the Coast Guard demolished the tallest structure on Attu Island. A 625-foot LORAN tower -- which stands for Long Range Aids to Navigation -- was brought down on Wednesday. Its Russian-American signal was turned off on August 1st, and the station will be decommissioned on August 26.

Today, Attu's only residents are Coast Guardsmen. About a dozen people have been stationed there to monitor the LORAN signal, and when the Coast Guard decommissions the station on August 26, Alaska's westernmost island will be left uninhabited.

The military first manned a LORAN station on the island during World War II, and that tower had been in use for fifty years. But improvements to navigational technology have rendered Attu's LORAN station -- and LORAN stations across the country -- obsolete. Last year, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget described the system as "outdated" and calculated that the government could save $36 million a year by disbanding it.

Chief Petty Officer Dana Warr says that the Coast Guard agreed with this assessment.

"It's an antiquated system. The GPS system is being used much more, and the Coast Guard didn't really have any use for the LORAN signal," says Warr. "So, it was determined that all the LORAN stations across the United States would be shut down."

In February, Coast Guard turned off the domestic signal at six of Alaska's stations, including Attu. The Port Clarence LORAN tower, which was then Alaska's tallest structure, was demolished in April