The Silo's at the end of KGB road...

[Nephler]

The airstrip is use quite a bit. It's well taken care of, one of the only thinks out that way that is.

[rwjoyak]

If anyone is interested in the history/photos of Nike and other early warning sites from around Alaska, you can check out the following links:
- Ed's Nike Missile Web Site and http://ed-thelen.org/alaska-sites.jpg (map of Anchorage and Fairbanks area Nike sites)
- http://www.nikealaska.org/
- Alaskan Air Defenses and its parent site, Online Air Defense Radar Museum (which has lots of additional links on the left side of the page)
- Murphy Dome 1956-1957
- MURPHY DOME-An Airman's Chronicle
- Living in Alaska - Life in the Last Frontier » Murphy Dome - From Someone Who Was There

The last three are about the Murphy Dome Air Force Station near Fairbanks. Murphy Dome was just one of many such sites around Alaska. Being near Fairbanks where I grew up and having visited it in the early 1970s I found its history to be of particular interest. But many of the other sites have interesting histories as well...and some can be found by searching the web.

[rwjoyak]

Here's some other related links that might be of interest:
- Group Repairs Alaskan Nike Missile Site
- Friends of Nike site restoration invite public to open house: Anchorage | adn.com
- a-2-562.org Moose Creek Nike Site
- Nike Ajax & Hercules Ordnance Support Home Page
- Nike Missile Links
- http://www.nikesitesummit.net/uploads/3/5/5/8/3558635/site_summit_history_powepoint_-_fonss.pdf (broken link) and its parent site, Friends of Nike Site Summit - Home
- Nike Missile System
- Site BAY, Alaska

[Jason1233]

Any reports of people dying out there in the past? I snapped a pic of a bearded old mans face when I went down in the tunnels it creeped the hell out of me. I'm just curious to find out who the ghost might have been.

[Dakster]

One of my co-workers was stationed at Sparrevohn AFS during his time in the Air Force. He didn't have fond memories of it though.

[Doverly]

Jason, are you sure the man didn't actually LIVE in there?

[GnomadAK]

I had heard that the Nike site at Goose Bay had been torn down a few years back, but here are some photos from when they were still standing, although abandoned since 1980 or so.

One of the missile bunkers



The generator building



The launch building. The Mad Max decorations and grafitti add to the ambiance!



The view from inside the launch building. The missile rode on the rail platform into launch position



And the platform, the launch pad, complete with a motorcycle ready to launch!




There was a fence all around the facility, complete with some moldering old "no trespassing use of deadly force is authorized signs". My dad used to work at this site and Site Summit. mostly Site Summit. We visited Site Summit on a elementary school field trip. They even rolled a Nike out for us, from a long distance of course.

The main building was converted to a minimum security prison, mostly for drunk drivers doing their 3 day sentences. The state closed that facility and not long afterwards someone burned it down. About all that remains these days is the airstrip, and whatever roads left after the state leveled the bunkers and buildings.

[AKStafford]

I was out there a couple of years ago and there was a crew doing a pretty massive clean up.

[Glitch]

Originally Posted by starlite9

I don't know the dates, the sites were built in the late forties and operated (if I recall correctly) in to the early 70's before being shut down. They are around Fairbanks as well, the systems were connected in with the early warning systems all along Alaska's Northern and Western coastlines as well.

When I was a kid, they launched a couple of times off the mountain above Anchorage and we could see the missiles head along the mountains to the south, figure they were doing test fires out towards the Gulf of Alaska.

They also use to shoot 105's shells from Eagle River Flats up onto the base of that mountain as well. They dropped wrecked cars up there by helo's and then shelled them for practice up into the early 70's as well until the public realized they were firing shells "Over" the Richardson Highway and then it stopped after a lot of protests about it. We use to sit out on the playground at Chester Valley Elementary school in the early 1960's and watch the black flak puffs by them... At that time we thought that was pretty cool... At night, the shelling would make the entire sky flash just like it would on a battle field...

They don't do a lot of that type of stuff there anymore.

As far as I know the Navy still uses Camp Pendleton, CA for naval bombardment, firing over the San Diego freeway (I-5). They have been doing that for decades.