Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Forest Service will spend $10 million to return Cold War site to nature

The U.S. Forest service says it will spend $10 million to raze a former Cold War defense facility and return its mountaintop site to nature. On a 5,960-foot mountain peak 40 miles east of San Diego, the Laguna Mountain Air Force base was a busy place in the Cold War as hundreds of personnel -- technicians, radar scanners and military brass -- tracked Soviet submarines cruising off San Diego, prepared to alert the nation in case of nuclear attack, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The federal government wants to raze the mountaintop complex of nearly a dozen gutted and derelict structures closed for 25 years. The Forest Service will stage a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday to open the restoration project, which is expected to be completed by early 2012...more

Your "stimulus" funds at work. A more complete story is here.

1 comment:

Tick said...

In the mid-sixties I did a year at Mt Laguna. It was the most enjoyable of all my time in service. I don't know what it would cost to clean the mess up but I'd like to see it done. It's a beautiful area of forest.

The gentleman in the article that said things were sometimes "hairy" and that we "tracked submarines" may not be full of bovine scat but at the least he dis-remembers things. The hairiest it ever got was when we tracked an unknown aircraft and went on alert until it was identified or when we got snowed in for a few days without beer and cigarettes.

I don't know how we would have tracked submarines with only long range and height finder radar. That was better left to the navy. We tracked aircraft and missiles (regardless of where they came from).

Here are a few more photos of why it needs cleaning up. http://www.radomes.org/museum/recent/MountLagunaAFSCA.html