NASA tracking station adventure

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The Generator building.

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Last pic

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Hope you enjoyed todays "Big Adventure". The kids and wife sure did.

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Here is a vid my wife shot of us coming out of a small town headed towards the tracking station. Nothing spectacular


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-g9aDl4iqw"]YouTube- ‪Abandoned Nasa Tracking Station Run‬‎[/ame]

[Martinjmpr]

Wow, that's amazing. I love "recent history" stuff like that.

"Recent history" is cool because it's recent enough to still be in decent condition, but not old enough to have attracted the attention of professional historic preservationists.

I also like military sites because they are so often set up in haste and then just as quickly abandoned which can make for some cool relics (they're sort of like modern-day ghost towns in that respect.)

My personal favorites are the abandoned ICBM bases that dot the Western landscape. There are currently 450 active ICBM silos and almost 600 abandoned or closed down silos, to say nothing of the various communications sites and support sites, and closed bases.

You would think that somewhere out there would be a comprehensive list of closed down or abandoned military installations in the US, but if there is such a list, I've never seen it (and I've spent hours on the internet searching.)

Although, knowing a little bit about how the government and military work, I'm actually not surprised that there isn't a comprehensive list. Once a base is no longer active, people tend to forget about it, and even the people who work there just want to finish up their jobs and move on, they're not really thinking about preserving anything. It's the "short timer's attitude" as applied to historic buildings, I guess.

Anyway, great pictures! Sounds like a fun time.

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Thanks Martin. It was fun to take the wife and kids up there. If anyone heads out this way and if im in town I would glady show you all where she is.

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I found a few historic pictures of the Ely site.

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By looking at the winter picture above (1st one) and comparing to the ones I took yesterday you can see that the station was added onto at some point in its life. The generator build was expanded to include two more generators. Two additions were also added to the main building. One addition added at least 35% more square footage while the other was for another radar dish and dome housing. The dome housing is now gone from both of there mounts. I would like to go back up there and take much more detailed pictures if anyone would like to join me. We just need to work out the dates. Maybe an over night stay up at the base?

[angusdevil]

Sweet! Looks like it was a fun trip. Reminds me of the Comm tower that was just north of Four Peaks that was abandoned for the longest time but the tower was still up. It was pulled down and revamped a couple months back so you can't go exploring but I got lots of pics before it was closed back up

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Historic pics