C-70 Missile Site: (
Satellite, it was not the namesake park, it was the office campus)
C-70 Barracks and Control Center: (
Satellite, it is long gone)
C-49 Missile Site: (
3D Satellite, it is not labeled on Google Maps, but it is now an Army Reserve Training Center [
hfchronicle])
C-49 Barracks and Control Center: (
Satellite, it is now Patriots Park)
Nike missiles were deployed in the 1950s to stop Russian bombers that would fly over the North Pole. The launching of Sputnik in 1957 made them obsolete because of the development of ICBMs (InterContinental Ballistic Missiles). But they were active until 1974. [
ChicagoTribune] The missiles were stored in silos on elevators that would raise them for launch.
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AllWorldWars
Bell Laboratories, through its subsidiary Western Electric Company, designed the Nike systems radar and communication equipment In order to save time and money, the engineers recommended a system that was as simple as possible and based on existing technology, SMITHSONIAN.
[Two of the original low-power radar antennas are mounted on the roof.] |
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AllWorldWars
This was the high-powered radar, which was a later development.
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The above must have been a development site. When deployed, the radar stands were taller and more compact.
Nathan McMuir
posted two images with the comment: "Remember the Nike missile sites."
[There are way more comments than I'm going to look at. But some comments about the Homewood site caught me eye.]
Charlette Moore: My husband was stationed at the one in Homewood, Illinois
Part of it was off of Halsted and another part was on 187th.
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reddit
[Several comments explain what is now on some of these sites.] |
I started working in northeast Naperville in 1973. One time when we were driving someplace for lunch along Diehl Road, someone pointed out where the Nike missile base was. So that is why I'm going to dig into the details of that base, which was C-70. I start with an overview because the missle silos (red rectangle) were south of I-88, but the control center and barracks (yellow rectangle) were north of I-88. I included the quarry that was in Warrenville because it doesn't impact the display resolution. Note that today's Nike Park was fields.
The missle site at the photo's resolution:
The control site (on the west side) and the barracks (on the east side). I include Washington Street on the right to help with locating the facility on today's satellite maps. I also included the field boundaries north of Warrenville because, if you zoom out on a satellite map, you can still see evidence of those boundaries.
While I was on a role, I also got an aerial photo that was ten years later. We can see how BP/Amaco built around the Nike facility and why that is vacant land today. I also included the former-Bell Labs facility in the northwest quadrant of Warrenville and Naperville Roads because that is where I worked. It still has the configuration that it had when it was built in 1967. That is significant because I had heard that the roads and parking lots were designed so that it would look like AT&T's bell logo. And indeed it did.
I also dug into the details of the Homewood site since David Addison provided
some details.
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