A couple of weeks ago I simply needed a break and took a road trip into a very rural area of North Dakota to take one picture.
Twenty or so years ago I was hunting with my brother in this same area on a foggy fall day. The experience of seeing this structure (and a totally abandoned military base) emerge out of the mist was a bizarre experience.
I recently wrote a grant (unfunded unfortunately) that focused on linking local realities to U.S. history. North Dakota, it could be argued, played a major role in the cold war. With the bomber bases and missile silos, it was, by itself, one of the biggest nuclear threats in the world. It also had the thing I went to photograph.
A “super sensitive” radar installation intended to spot enemy attacks coming from the North. The history of this installation is itself very interesting. It cost millions and millions of dollars and functioned for only a few months. By the way, I am not suggesting that the information in the linked article is accurate. If you make use of the link from the article, you will note that the small and now nearly abandoned town described is not spelled correctly.
We pretty much “spent” the old Soviet Union into submission. It makes you wonder if the U.S. could be manipulated into a similar fate.
I wonder how many of the students taking history in North Dakota have idea any idea what the structure I photographed is or what their state had to do with world events.
