Pyramid in Dakota
Just north of Nekoma, North Dakota lies an abandoned, pyramid-shaped missile defence building; left empty since the US Army skipped town back in the ’70s, after what must be one of the shortest periods of operation of any Department of Defense initiative.
When fully operational, the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex (SRMC) contained a phased-array radar on each of the pyramid’s four faces – providing a complete wide-angle view capable of tracking incoming enemy missiles up to 360 km away.
In the event of an attack from an intercontinental missile, the site could respond with one of its thirty nuclear Spartan or sixteen Sprint missiles, protecting itself, the 50 or so people in Nekoma, and the Grand Forks Air Force Base just 100 km to its southeast.
On the 2nd of October 1975 – only one day after the site became fully operational – Congress voted to shutdown the program, and within a year the radar building had been gutted and the missiles removed.
Despite currently being in “caretaker” status, Google Earth’s historical imagery of the complex suggests it may have been secretly repurposed by the military! (Links to historical imagery require the Google Earth Plugin).
In 2006, one of the sewage/cooling lakes was filled in…
…but a different cooling pool was built between 1990 and 1997.
More information at the unofficial SRMSC website, and there’s an informative video on Youtube.
wow~~~ cool sir~~~ hahahaha
You can see some pictures of this amazing building on my blog : http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/10/abandoned-us-anti-ballistic-missile.html
Those are some nice pics. I especially like the ones showing the building “under construction”. Boy, that’s a lot of rebar.
Welcome to reading Google Sightseeing JB. What’d you think of the actual post?
Serves pretty much the same purpose (awaits flood of pedants putting me right) and looks similar to Fylingdales in North Yorkshire except Fylingdales only has three faces
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
What do you call a pyramid with three sides?
A pyramid with three sides? Tetrahedron (shout out to Google search).
You’re right about the Flyingdales though. It does look very similar and its purpose seems to run in tandem with the now defunct N. Dakota version. However, I will have to admit that the British version of the two is the cooler one: with a reference in Jethro Tull’s “Flyingdale Flyers”.
Didn’t this site pop up here a few weeks ago very briefly?
I thought The Man had got to you and forced you to take it down.
Yeah, it was an accidental post. Nice catch though. As far as The Man… he can’t keep me down. Thanks for your comment.
I don’t entirely understand the logic behind sending a nuclear misile to shoot down an intercontinental missile. It sounds more like retaliation not ‘protecting’.
It seems the US Congress of the 1970’s agreed with you in part since the project only lasted a few months after going fully operational and shut it down only one day after it went online.
I worked There in the early ’70’s for a sub-contracter. An amazing place and an amazing waste of taxpayer money.