LEWIS — A second Verizon Wireless cell-phone tower went online Friday, providing coverage on a dark stretch of Adirondack Northway.

The tower, situated in Lewis near Meadowmount School of Music, will carry a Verizon cell-phone signal for about eight miles around Exit 32 on Interstate 87. The signal also covers Route 9 between Ray Woods Road and County Route 12.

Last month, the phone company fired up the first of a total 13 new towers designed specifically for the Northway corridor in the Adirondack Park.

Two more towers in the system are nearing completion and should be turned on by year's end: one at Schroon Falls and one at Warrensburg.

"By activating our second Northway project site, we're one step closer to closing the wireless coverage gap along the Northway," Marquett Smith, president of Verizon Wireless's Upstate New York Region, said in a news release.

"We're committed to getting the remaining sites built and in service as quickly as we can."

The Northway project is part of more than $100 million Verizon has allocated to invest in its Upstate New York Region network in 2008.

The I-87 corridor system will provide Verizon cell service along 46 miles of heavily traveled interstate between Albany and Montreal.

A new tower in North Hudson recently went online.

Two more towers — one at Poke-O-Moonshine Mountain and one designed to reach Routes 9N and 73 in Keene — have received permit approval from the Adirondack Park Agency but aren't online yet.

E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at: kdedam@pressrepublican.com