Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad Station (1868): An Italianate railroad station that served Wilkes-Barre for a century before it closed in 1972. The Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (later known as the Central Railroad of New Jersey) was founded by magnates who conquered the mountains and tapped the Wyoming coal fields.

I’ve been struggling with this location. The reason is this: I often hesitate to reveal locations to the public because their revelation often leads to their destruction. At the same time, there are certain stories that simply have to be told. This is one of them.

In the heart of Pennsylvania coal country at the fringes of a small city is a brewery. The brewery has become a federal building, and its hulking brewhouse still proudly displays the pomp of the Gilded Age. Within the shadows of its countenance is a small, shuttered train station. Like most abandonments of our modern era, this diminutive edifice tells the story of corruption, mismanagement, and the ineptitude of bureaucratic sinecures.

The interior work was top-notch for an era that prided itself on craftshmanship.

The modest Italianate structure facing the railroad tracks along Wilkes-Barre Boulevard was known as the Lehigh & Susquehanna Station (and later the Central Railroad of New Jersey Station). From the outside, it looks like most small-town stations in most rail-towns of mid-19th century America, but looks are deceiving.  Within its walls are awe-inspiring works of original craftsmanship: hand-carved mahogany, hand-laid terrazo, and – perhaps most compelling – a resplendent, curved staircase banister, a spiral exemplar of roccoco. Just look inside this station and you’ll immediately know why it earned its place in, “Great American Railroad Stations.”

The story of this station, however, isn’t told through its beauty. There is a sordid side, too. This station – as it exists in its dilapidated state – is a manifestation of boss politics that still seems to thrive despite the death of the “Tweed” gang and Tammany Hall. Granted, Wilkes-Barre is one among hundreds of cities with rampant corruption. All too often, we pay too much attention to national politics when the true turpitude rests in our local leaders (dare I call them leaders).

Market Street Square, the property in which the railroad station rests, was owned by convicted (and admitted) felon Thom Greco. Greco has been called a real estate mogul by some, but at least one anonymous online comment finds the title humorous. “‘Mogul?’ Really? I’ve sold to that guy 4 times over the last 20 years, and it took threats of all kinds to get my money. I always got, ‘Mr. Greco is unavailable’ from some young woman on the phone.”

But Greco is just a strand of much larger, much more Machiavellian web. Fact is: He was not part of the County Redevelopment Authority, who decided to purchase the station from him in 2005 for $5.8 million. Unlike the commissioners who accepted bribes and extorted flat screen televisions in exchange for Greco’s largess, he wasn’t the guy who had control over taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars. Truth is, to properly tell this story, we have to start in 1868 – when the station was built. Yes, this station has more layers than its recent ignominious decline.

A Product of Pennsylvania’s Coal Boom

When the station was born, the Steam Age was at its apex. Locomotives bombasted their way westward to join the continent by iron rail. The same year that the Wilkes-Barre station was built, the Golden Spike was driven into its Laurel Tie at Promontory Summit, Utah. Suffice to say, the country was hungry for coal – both to power its steam engines, and to cast the increasingly voracious appetite for steel. Wilkes-Barre was conveniently situated between two canals. Getting coal from one canal to another meant that the two waterways had to be connected by rail. These were the Wilkes-Barre station’s inchoate moments.

The rabid enthusiasm of the era was immediately apparent within its original walls and accouterments, but only once I was inside. I was a week into my journey, so it wasn’t easy to elicit any sort of enthusiasm out of me, especially after exploring dozens of awe-inspiring sites-in-decline. The station feigns curiosity with its exterior. Honestly, it isn’t much to look at from the outside. Its embellishments aren’t like a vainglorious wedding cake, but rather like a hollow birthday cake (with opportunity for surprise of course).

Like many cakes, this station also had layers; additions and extensions attenuated its hidden corners and serendipitous potential. In the early 20th century the Central Railroad of New Jersey was the sole leasor of the tracks. Many a luxurious Jersey passenger passed through its hallways. No doubt, the ornate frosting within its walls was spackled on after the fact; fireplaces were later added and aristocratic comforts became prominent. Whereas the early station served the needs of industry, the improved station became the playground of quixotic entrepreneurs, tycoons, and political bosses.

A Grand Train Station in Decline

Those halcyon days quickly came to a halt by the Great Depression. Passenger service precipitously declined while anthracite coal prices plummeted. The CNJ went into receivership for an entire decade, beginning in 1939. By the time it was finally able to emerge from its financial straits, the railroad found itself in the midst of a burgeoning American love affair with the highway. It didn’t take long for the Wilkes-Barre station to receive its final passenger on July 1, 1963. Train NO. 301 feebly rolled into the Wilkes-Barre stop with a single passenger coach in tow; its two passengers exited the car; and, according to railroad historian Ed Gardner, “thus ended a period of passenger service inaugurated 120 years earlier.”

The five decades that followed were largely modest years for the station. Vacant cars – skeletons of an earlier era – stood in a pall-like atmosphere to be eaten away by time. The station itself was painstakingly restored in the mid-70s, and it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 12, 1975. Reading MU cars and Fruit Grower Express cars began to occupy the adjoining lot. Around 1980 it opened as “The Station,” a high-end bar and restaurant. Some of the nearby Reading MU cars were converted into charming Bed & Breakfast-style overnight accommodations.

According to Michael G. Rushton of NEPA Railfan, the place was quite “ritzy” by 1984, and it hosted political functions with expensive, gourmet cuisine. The station was then owned by Marvin Roth, but he passed away and the park was auctioned. A single, lonely plaque bears the Marvin’s (and the station’s?) epigraph: “Marvin Roth, a local entrepreneur, rehabilitated this edifice so posterity may forever enjoy its presence.”

The Choo Choo Inn (the train car sleepers) were phased out, and “entertainment magnate” Thom Greco acquired the property. “The crowd started changing,” Said Michael Rushton. “It was not the college crowd, but thugs from out of town… There were shootings, stabbings, robberies, fights, breaking into cars.”

Its final incarnation was as Banana Joe’s, a restaurant chain with cocktails and American fare. Rushton said nobody really went to it, and for “whatever reasons, it failed.” The nearby rail cars met a similar fate. By this time they had become occupied by the homeless and were the victims of fire at least twice a week. Such was the state of the Station when the Luzerne County Redevelopment Authority considered buying the property in 2005.

Rebirth as Market Street Square and Chess Piece in Corruption

By early 2006 the Luzerne County Redevelopment Authority decided to purchase the building for $5.8 million. By then, it was dilapidated and in need of millions in restoration work. It soon became apparent that the Authority had purchased a white elephant, and it stands to this day an embarrassment to all taxpaying Luzerne County citizens. Even more egregious are the stories of the men embroiled in this controversy.

Thom Greco worked with numerous Authority commissioners in the negotiation for the building’s sale.  Soon after it was sold, Greg Skrepenak asked Greco for $10,000 worth of flat screen televisions, presumably for his father’s sports bar.  Greco complied, but when he asked for payment, Skrepenak alluded to the fact that the televisions were recompense for the county’s purchase of the Market Street Square Station. Unfortunately, Skrepenak is difficult to reach these days… He’s in jail for accepting $5,000 in bribes for another completely separate deal with a developer.

Skrepenak wasn’t the only Redevelopment Authority official to be tied up in legal trouble. Back in 2005, Allen Bellas was drumming up the purchase of the Railway Station in the local newspaper. “It’s going to tie into all the downtown projects. It’s obviously going to help out the passenger rail service.” Of course, five years later, the station is still not helping out passenger rail service and is far from helping downtown Wilkes-Barre. As for Allen Bellas, who was then the Executive Director of the Redevelopment Authority, he’s in jail for a $2,000 bribery scandal that’s unrelated to the Station. Even the owners of the property leased to Big Ugly’s Sports Bar (the Bar that received the tainted $10,000 worth of flat screen TV’s), were ensnared in October of 2009 for paying a $1,400 bribe to Gerald Bonner and William McGuire, both one-time bureaucrats in the Luzerne County Housing Authority.

All of these events transpired so quickly that the Redevelopment Authority had to respond with its own Public Relations campaign. Their first order of business was to verify the accuracy of the price they paid for the station. This is generally done by using two neutral real estate appraisers. Before they purchased the property, they chose Stanley Komosinsky and Alan Rosen, neither of whom appear on the roster of the Appraisal Institute (the nationally recognized professional organization for appraisers). Perhaps not coincidentally, both appraisers valued the property at exactly the same price: $5.74 million. And it gets even deeper: Alan Rosen works for the real estate company owned by the Mayor of Wilkes-Barre, Thomas M. Leighton.

A Dilapidated Symbol of Corruption

These days, the Central New Jersey Rail Station (now euphemistically known as “Market Street Square”) sits in neglect. But the station serves as a very salient symbol of bureaucracy run amok and the loss of accountability in local government. It’s highly likely that the men involved with embezzling the public coffers in various ways will receive nothing more than a few months in jail and a slap on the wrist. They’ll return to their lives agrandized by the lucre from the backs of their constituents.

The fact still remains: It is a beautiful building, filled with wonders, curves, craftsmanship, and symbology. If one spends moments inside of this grand structure, one is easily transported beyond the depressing story of how it came to be what it is. I left the disheveled box cars that line the building and walked back to my car. When I photographed it, I was oblivious to its history; and in those innocent moments I had truly discovered a different world inside of a tiny little train station among the once-prosperous anthracite valley of Pennsylvania.

Sources

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/ls.html
http://www.mtn-top-hs.org/njcrailroadhistory.pdf
http://nepa.railfan.net/articles/mssid.htm
http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/criminal-law-plea-agreements/13223135-1.html
http://purebunkum.com/?p=3352
http://sightsonpennsylvania.blogspot.com/2010/05/great-train-robbery-part-1.html
http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=75059
http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/criminal-law-plea-agreements/13223135-1.html
http://www.timesleader.com/news/2-appraisals-performed-on-station-tracts.html?showAll=Y
http://www.timesleader.com/news/2_appraisals_performed_on_station_tracts_07-28-2010.html
http://citizensvoice.com/news/greco-pleads-guilty-admits-knowing-of-gratuities-1.904564

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The history of Binghamton’s First Ward leads many to stand in front of a given area and say things such as, “Here was once a great scale-making factory,” or “Here was a factory that sold Matthew Brady his supplies and went on to make the film used on the first moon landing.” These are gone now. But something was there then, which everyone knew, saw, worked with or around, that now hardly anyone knows is still there. Imprisoned in the 1920s, it still lives, and from time to time escapes into the streets. Unlike the Jones Scale Works, or the spot on Charles Street where Ansco employed tens of thousands of people, this forgotten entity spans the entire First Ward.

There is no spot in the First Ward from which one can say he is far away from Trout Brook, or Trout Creek. It was once a peaceful little brook, but it became a mosquito-ridden dumping ground as the ward grew. It was once loved, and then it was shunned. Much money was spent hiding it as a shameful nuisance. It is a natural spring, here before any settler, and it is here still.

“Trout Brook” is only known now to the very old timers, or to people in the water department. From a ravine in Glenwood Cemetery, it can be seen running freely. There is a mention of it on a plaque in St. Michael’s Cemetery next to Glendwood Cemetery. The only other visible mention is on a large sign at the creek’s far end (near McDonald Ave.), which gives warning with a phone number to call in case of flooding. Thus, the only two public notices of its existence bookend its whole length.

Today, Trout Brook runs like this: … visible from the Glenwood Cemetery ravine it runs free, and then it runs in a large square tunnel under Route 17. It discharges from there on a series of cement steps next to the teacher’s parking area for Woodrow Wilson School. Hidden amongst the overgrowth there is a stone boulder plaque from the builders of the earthen dam on Mt. Prospect, which is now the major source of control for Trout Brook. On the grounds of Wilson School one can see the fenced-in area of Trout Brook running through its “screen chamber.” These iron bars are meant to catch debris before it flows into the tunnel.

I live a few blocks from there, and began researching this water system three years ago during the noted floods of 2006. I have a manhole cover in my yard, which is clearly noted: “TROUT BROOK, 1927.” I came home from work at 10 p.m. to find all my neighbors’ yards a lake, and my manhole cover ajar.

After the screen chamber near Wilson School playground, the water is not visible again unless one actually enters the tunnel. The tunnel goes under private residences on Baxter St., and makes an abrupt left turn on to Julian St. A manhole cover can be seen in the sidewalk on the north side of Julian St. about three housed in from Glenwood Ave. Just before this area one can see an odd-shaped piece of wood about the size of a door or table that apparently was a stop-gap repair job, or was once used for entry. It forms the ceiling of the tunnel for about 6 feet, and is not in keeping with the rest of the tunnel workmanship.

The tunnel, which in most areas is about 5 feet high, proceeds down Julian St., and has a manhole cover in the middle of the intersection where Julian meets Johnson St. Because that cover is a little loose, when cars hit it, the reverberation can be heard blocks away even above ground. The sound is deafening if one is anywhere near it inside the tunnel.

Another manhole is visible where the tunnel crosses Holland St. at Julian, clearly marked “Trout Brook.” As the tunnel crosses Holland and goes under a vacant lot, the workmanship changes. All this way the tunnel is made of reinforced concrete; these sections were made whole and installed in 1927. But there appears to have been some trauma here; some segments are made of indented plastic, and others of clay shingles.

The tunnel heads briefly towards Clinton St. for about the space of five private yards on the West Side of Holland St., and then crosses Colfax Ave. near May St. Four manholes can be seen covering it in the area many old timers refer to as the “May Street Dump,” the raving below Berlin St. I found a rather large salamander clinging to the walls in this area, and later brought a professor from BU who specializes in such creatures, to rescue it. We could not find it again. (His name is Dylan Horvath, and when he saw Mt Prospected nearby he felt that it was no longer unusual that such creatures would make their way there from such terrain.

The storm drain then crosses Charles St. near the steep curve, and crosses under the land where the Ansco plant used to be for so many decades. The path of its course is surrounded by chain link fence on the Ansco side, and the wrought iron fence of Spring Forest Cemetery. It passes under Spring Forest Cemetery, and at Mygatt St., there is a dramatic change in workmanship. From Mygatt to Wilson School the work is generally plain even cement piping. But from Mygatt to the Chenango River outfall, near the old Cutler Ice House, the tunnel is made of beautiful stone work with a large keystone where the stone portion begins.

The tunnel makes its way down Lydia to Gaines, and then under Winding Way, which owes its winding shape to the course of the brook.

The stone portion was built about 1924-25 by a contractor named Fitzgerald. While work-in on the drain, one of his vehicles backfired in such a way as to start a Lydia St. house on fire. A change in patent laws regarding concrete during this time made it cheaper than stone work when another contractor named Clarence Rose got the contract to build the segment from Mygatt to Prospect St.

Mr. Rose stood on the hill in Glenwood Cemetery for his mother’s funeral with the Trout Brook running freely nearby while the work was going on down below. Mr. Rose was an avid hunter, and once slightly wounded himself with a gun. He was swindled out of several thousand dollars by a con man from Los Angeles in the 1930s. Involved in politics in the Chenango Forks, he left an estate of $750,000 when he passed away in 1958. His retirement party a few years before that was held at the IBM Country Club with over 800 guests attending. Someone left flowers on his grave in Katellville Cemetery during the Christmas season of 2008.

A careless typographer at the Binghamton Press on Sep 19, 2927 marred much of the meaning in an article headlined: “Trout Brook Sewer Is Two Thirds Finished,” but this detail can be made out: “Clarence W. Rose has completed the Trout Brook sewer to a point west of Colfax Avenue near Holland Street.” Other articles of this period show Rose to be working on the screen chamber at Wilson School and on the pump houses, which are still visible in a state of decay on the Ansco property on Charles St. Interestingly, on the same day a New York Times article tells of the death of a former Binghamton mayor’s wife.

Mayor George E. Green, during the 1890s had to deal with a large group of angry First Warders who blamed the City for flooding their basements during water main installation work. They claimed that the city had destroyed ancient wooden storm drains put in place by Daniel S. Dickinson as he drained the “swamp” and developed the land for parcel selling. Mayor Green took the position that the people were after “Free improvements” to their lands .The First Warders petitioned Governor Levi P. Morton, who had to spend months investigating the complaint. (The whole saga is captured in word for word letters on Google Books viewable by searching for “Wolcott Street Swamp Nuisance.”)

Gov. Morton, though forgotten today, was previously a Vice President of the United States under President Arthur. Before that he was Minister to France, where he accepted the Statue of Liberty for the United States. Much loved in France, he was given the honor of driving the first rivet into the statue (in a big toe).

The wooden storm drain in question drained spots of swampy water into Trout Brook. The incident became known as the Wolcott Street Nuisance, but we know Wolcott St. today as St. Cyril Ave., a one-block street just below Spring Forest Cemetery running to Starr Ave. where the Jones Scale Works once Operated.

When he died in 1910 Mayor Green was buried in Spring Forest Cemetery. Just as Contractor Rose was busy burying Trout Brook under Spring Forest Cemetery in September 1927, working on 20-foot-deep pumping houses just next door at the Ansco site, the former Mayor’s wife came home from Albany, where she lived, and as she tended to the family plot she dropped dead on her husband’s grave.

“As she was turning away from the plot, employes (sic) in the cemetery saw her collapse. Physicians said that the death was caused by heart disease.” (New York Times, Sep. 19, 1927). The widow Green was probably not happy with the way the main lawn of the cemetery looked at that time. She was buried beside her husband.

From 1904 to 1927 there was a peaceful little pond using Trout Brook water in the main lawn, reported to be part of the improvement work going on in 1904 when Architect Issac G. Perry (of State Hospital “Castle” fame) designed the cemetery gates as his last job, and then promptly died becoming the first body brought through the gates. That local history story is fairly well known, but those articles also mention the intent to use Trout Brook to create a lake.

No one knew Trout Brook more fondly than Senator Daniel Dickinson. He built his home so as to look upon it, and picked his child’s, and thence, his own burial spot so as to be near it.

He was robbed of the above ground appearance of this brook next to his grave fifty years after his death, but it still runs at about the same level under Spring Forest Cemetery as he is in his grave. Mr. Dickinson built his home, “the Orchard,” on the West Bank of the Chenango River near the Erie Railroad Bridge. When his body was brought home from NYC, thousands followed the hearse from the depot to his home where present day McDonald Ave. is located (and where one can see a Trout Brook flood control sign). Maps show his home to have been between Trout Brook and the rail bridge. One map of the 1800s actually signifies the brook as “Dickinson Creek,” but it apparently didn’t take.

In a “Testimonial of Respect of the Bar of New York” (viewable on Google Books), it is stated that the Statesman’s “body was laid in the Northwest parlor and the vast concourse that thronged to take a last look, entered from the south, passed around the coffin, and was permitted to leave from the East entrance.”

Upwards of 6,000 people escorted the casket to Spring Forest Cemetery from The Orchard. All of them had to have stepped on little bridges over the creek, not only on the Dickinson property where it would have been visible from that parlor window, but all along the route to Spring Forest.

Dickinson often visited his child’s grave and sat there writing poetry. He chose the family grave plot next to Trout Brook. In its coverage of the funeral, The New York Times referred to the stream as “insolent.” Let’s end with the coverage from the Testimonial of Respect.

“How sweet the grave wherein he (Dickinson) lies entombed. A little mound, shaded by an adjoining hill was the spot selected for the final resting place of this great and goodly man. A little fretful brook, whose wandering course leads along the base of the mound, sings gentle dirges on its rippling surface, as if to soothe the calm sleeper who rests so near its borders.”

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Editor’s Note: What follows is a retrospective of the controversy surrounding an abandoned site in a secluded spot near the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California. Since I moved to the small city in the East Bay, the site has been on my list of places to photograph.  But Point Molate also represents a darker side of city politics that few are willing to talk about. Interspersed with photos of the abandoned “castle,” I’ll tell you about the very prescient influence of Indian Gaming on city politics in California.  I hope you enjoy.

Plagued with the highest homicide rate on the West Coast, Richmond, California often gets the brunt of bad media attention.[1] The East Bay city of 100,000 is gripped by the problems of urban blight and industrial legacy. On the North side of town is the Chevron oil refinery.  Since 1902, its effluence has seeped into the surrounding air. The winds from the San Francisco Bay sweep across the former Bay island of Potrero (now a peninsula) and carry refinery pollutants towards the impoverished neighborhoods to the East.  But on the West Side of the Chevron refinery is the city’s best kept secret – a small, little-developed waterfront stretch of 423 acres that reached the BRAC cutting room floor during Clinton-era military cutbacks.[2] As a result, a former military fuel depot has fortuitously landed on the City of Richmond’s doorstep.  This gift – sold to Richmond for $1 in 2003 – has quickly become a veritable ‘toxic asset’ for the city, which now finds itself at the center of controversy and competing interests.[3]

The 423-acre plot at Point Molate represents the very distillation of the struggle between Use Value and Exchange Value in local land use politics. At stake is a billion-dollar Native American gaming project; the interests of a coalition of environmentalists, municipal parks, and biking groups; the third most profitable corporation in the U.S.; and a slice of the $5.1 billion Native American gaming industry in California.[4] Few other examples in California development history portray the intricacies of local land conflict as much as the conflict over Point Molate; knowing that, this paper will assert that Native American gaming compacts present some of the most controversial and challenging problems of modern urban planning history, and their implementation lacks the consensus that serves the best interest of most communities. Ultimately, Point Molate represents the continuing struggle between community autonomy, Federal law, and big business.

Brief History & Background

Point Molate began its life of land use over 5,000 years ago, as a home to the Ohlone tribe. The Native inhabitants left behind shell mounds (heaps of discarded shells) as evidence of their presence.[5] The Guidiville Rancheria band of Pomo Indians say this is definitive justification for the land’s designation as federally recognized reservation; however, opponents – including Randall Milliken, Ph D. of Davis, California – claim that the same justification refutes the claim made for the Point Molate casino. “Pomo Indians have no traditional cultural connection with lands on the east side of the San Francisco Bay,” writes Milliken in his letter, which is included in the draft EIR. “It was the homeland of the Chochenyo Ohlone speaking people and remains the homeland of their descendants today.”[6]

Richmond’s industrial base was born when Standard Oil Company moved into the East Side of what was then Potrero Island.  The surrounding hills served as a perfect, terraced holding-place for a large tank farm, which was continuously replenished through oil tanker arrivals at the nearby pier in the San Francisco Bay. Prior to 1900, the unique geographic assets of Potrero Island (which had become a peninsula in the early 1900s) led to its formation as a Chinese shrimp camp;[7] after 1906, Point Molate was further exploited by the growing shipping needs of the California Wine Association, whose headquarters in San Francisco was devastated by the Great Quake.[8] The California Wine Association – once the “world’s largest winery” – had gone largely out of use during Prohibition. By 1941, the United States Navy entered the fray.  War-time demand for petroleum meant that Point Molate would be ground zero to store and distribute oil for the Pacific Ocean theater of operations at Iwo Jima, Marshall, American Samoa, Bikini, and beyond.

Chevron

Since 1902, oil has played a major role in the development of the Point Molate area. As one of the earliest industrial heavyweights in California, Standard Oil’s Richmond Refinery used the promontory of Potrero Island to their advantage, eventually becoming “one of the world’s largest refineries.” Today, Chevron produces 243,000 barrels a day from its Richmond facility; the company boasts of contributing $61 million to community development in the city of Richmond.[9]

Chevron is just as vehement as the Guidiville Rancheria tribe in establishing their interest in Point Molate. In fact, the company hired former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to lobby for them with the Richmond City Council.[10] Community leaders contend that Chevron’s interests in the land are to provide a “buffer” of security between their refinery and any further human habitation.

Gary Fisher, a Chevron external affairs manager noted that wildfires and security are some of Chevron’s top concerns. “The opportunity for trespassing and vandalism, including an avoidable increased risk for a potential terrorist act directed towards the refinery, increases with public access,” Fisher wrote.  What Fisher doesn’t mention is perhaps the most compelling reason for Chevron’s interest in the land: Liability and the concern of class action lawsuits. According to an environmental report from the Navy, “an ammonia leak at the refinery could create a toxic cloud,” which would endanger the life of anyone who is nearby.[11]

Chevron offered the City of Richmond $83 million for Point Molate (in addition to the ongoing property taxes assessed for the property) making it the most lucrative up-front offer for the land (the Guidiville Band offered $50 million).[12] Chevron maintained that it intended to keep the land as a privately owned open-space preserve. This produced an unlikely partnership: Environmental groups that are generally “anti-Chevron” joined forces with the oil company to oppose the Point Molate casino project.

Development, Investment Interests and the City of Richmond

Even more powerful than Chevron were the development special interests. They were able to provide the promise of long-term revenue and infrastructure improvements for the cash-strapped city of Richmond. Point Molate development interests are largely represented by their ‘patriarch,’ Jim Levine. Levine is a successful Berkeley developer who made his riches in the toxic cleanup market. The development interests – not the Guidiville tribe – were the first to conceive of Point Molate as a casino Mecca. According to the Berkeley Daily Planet, Levine’s Upstream Development Company “went out and recruited [the Guidiville]… to take the land as a reservation and claim formal ownership of the land.”[13]

Surely, money was a big part of the motive for all parties involved. The city of Richmond hired a consulting company to analyze the casino potential of Point Molate – most telling was that the city did this before they received ownership of the land from the Navy. What the consultants found was a gold mine for the city, but more importantly, for the developers. The report estimated $500 million in economic activity each year; Upstream signed an agreement that the city would receive $20 million annually.[14]

Early in the process, Levine contacted the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (the “leading lender in the world of tribal casinos”); and, ultimately, Harrah’s signed on as financial partner.[15] Thus, the world’s largest gaming corporation had come into the fray, along with Levine and other financial backers. Further cementing the backing Levine’s Upstream had in government circles (particularly in obtaining reservation status from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and approval from the State of California), the powerfully connected William Cohen, Republican from Maine who was Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, joined the team as “consultant.”

In the midst of it all, Levine sold his plan to the public through a combination of promises of largesse (3,000 onsite jobs, 3,600 offsite jobs and 1,000 construction jobs); ^[16] environmentalism (Levine greenwashed the development as the “greenest project ever erected in California”);[17] and rehabilitation of the historic Winehaven buildings (probably to appease the Design Review Board).

Of course, along the way, there was plenty of opposition. Some opposition to the Casino Plan hailed from the County Board of Supervisors (who retracted their opposition upon learning that they – too – would receive $12 million a year from the casino).[18] Later, the State of California filed a lawsuit against Upstream; Governor Schwarzenegger’s office penned a letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Richmond’s mayor, saying the project “undermined the constitutionality of California’s Indian gaming regime.”[19] The state cited Proposition 1A as reasoning for their opposition, and Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer wrote to the Secretary of Interior that they had “serious concerns about the recent practice of tribes and municipalities seeking advantageous gaming opportunities on lands that are not traditionally tribal lands.”[20] It all culminated in April of 2005, when the State Attorney General’s Office joined a lawsuit with Bay Area park agencies against Levine’s Upstream and the city. The suit claimed that that the sale of the land failed to adhere to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). An Environmental Attorney for the Attorney General’s Office, Janill L. Richards spoke for the Attorney General’s office, saying that there was not adequate review “before a decision [was] made on an important piece of public property with significant public interests.”[21]

For a while, it looked like the project was dead in the water, but City Council member Gayle McLaughlin  (who opposed the project) said that the city – perhaps a bit too giddy with their newfound wealth – had already spent some of the $15 million in deposit money that Levine and his partners paid early in the process.[22] Upstream simply restarted from scratch, hiring consultants to draft a behemoth 3000-page Environmental Impact Report. Perhaps most telling about the project, however, came through silence that followed.  There was relative lack of large-scale community involvement in opposition to its plan. Perhaps the Environmental Impact Report was just too long?

Local Environmental Groups/Citizen Groups/Historic Preservation Groups

If one were to read the news reports of the project, one would get the sense that the project was a well-conceived plan with little public opposition – if a bit susceptible to the whims of bureaucratic rigamarole.  Of the dozens of newspaper articles that describe the controversy, very few – if any – include comments from actual community members. In the case that community concerns are cited in stories, it’s usually in the form of concerns that the project won’t go through.  And even in the rare case that community opposition is cited it’s actually community members from communities other than Richmond. It appeared that Richmond wasn’t the developers’ only target – it was simply the most convenient. Napa resident John Salmon, who is a partner with Levine in the project, originally was strongly against casinos in a talk in 2005 to Napa Rotarians. Apparently, Salmon said that the Richmond casino was a good deal for the Napa Valley, because it would relieve pressure that might otherwise lead to a gambling in the middle of Wine Country (where the Guidiville Pomo actually did originate from). The March 5, Napa Rotagram quoted Salmon as saying, “Molate will bear a likeness to Ghirardelli Square, and with its high-end qualities, will take the pressure off Napa and other North Bay locations that may face future casino proposals.”[23] Additionally, The Guidiville had originally proposed a casino in nearby Solano county, but the Board of Supervisors were adamantly against it – along with all community members in attendance at the meeting.

However, the absence of community involvement portrayed in the media isn’t the entire story. When one looks at the appendix of the Environmental  Impact Report – nearly 2000 pages by itself – the true community opposition reveals itself fully.  In Section 4 of Vol.  2, starting at page 74, the public review documents are displayed – over 400 pages in all; many of them state ardent opposition to the plan. Members of the community cited crime, traffic, gambling problems and the need for open space. But towards the end of Section 4, is the impassioned transcript of James Easter, who has lived in Richmond for 57 years. His words sum up – I think – the very real issue of Indian Gaming, and ultimately it arrives at the crux of my thesis and the true reason why communities are most often affected negatively due to Indian gaming, despite their presumed tax bounty.

“So what – I’m against Point Molate. I have been to a casino six or seven times in my life. I don’t consider myself a gambler, but I go through.  I do know that there’s a time and place for all things. It’s hard for us on the South Side. We can’t even get a decent shopping center down there… I’ll donate a little bit of money to the Indian Affairs. And I’m not against Indian gambling, but it seems strange to me that Indians got[sic] so much money to do all of this all of a sudden… I’m against a casino here, because it won’t bring no dollars. We lost Safeway. We lost Ford Motor Company. We lost all the big jobs. And now we’re broke and going to bring a CASINO? I’m against it.”[24]

Footnotes

[1] “Richmond leads per-capital murder rate in California.”

[2] BRAC – which stands for “Base Realignment and Closure,” was an Act of Congress in 1988. The Act helps return former military bases to public and community use.

[3] “BRAC – US Gov,” para. 3.

[4] Korosec, “Exxon, Chevron Win in a Loser Year for Top 500 Companies | BNET Energy Blog | BNET”; “Indian Gaming in California.”

[5] Santiago, “Betting on Point Molate.”

[6] “Draft Environmental Impact Statement / Environmental Impact Report,” 138-139.

[7] Weinstein, “Storming the Castle,” para. 10.

[8] Fronistas, “Before Napa, there was Winehaven,” para. 3.

[9] “Chevron Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project,” para. 6.

[10] Vega, “Point Molate Casino On Track After City Council OKs Proposal,” para. 3.

[11] Williams, “Point Molate: Waterfront Dream or Terrorist Nightmare?,” para. 6.

[12] Rosen Lum, “ChevronTexaco Hires Willie Brown to Undo the Deal,” 10.

[13] Brenneman, “Berkeley Developer’s Big Dreams Dominate Richmond Landscape,” para. 16.

[14] Simerman, “County ready to back Point Molate casino plan – ContraCostaTimes.com,” para. 8.

[15] Brenneman, “Berkeley Developer’s Big Dreams Dominate Richmond Landscape.”

[16] “Richmond OKs Point Molate casino project,” para. 6.

[17] Brenneman, “Point Molate Casino Gets Fast-Track Status,” para. 4.

[18] Simerman, “County ready to back Point Molate casino plan – ContraCostaTimes.com,” para. 1.

[19] Hoch, “Governor Letter Against Pt Molate,” 1.

[20] Tam, “Sides still divided over Richmond casino-hotel plan’s potential impact – Inside Bay Area,” para. 17.

[21] Brenneman, “State Attorney General Joins Point Molate Casino Fight,” para. 5.

[22] Ibid., para. 19-20.

[23] Brenneman, “Lawsuit Challenges Point Molate Casino. Category: News from The Berkeley Daily Planet – Thursday January 29, 2009,” para. 31.

[24] “Draft Environmental Impact Statement / Environmental Impact Report.”

Sources

“BRAC – US Gov.” Government. http://www.bracpmo.navy.mil/basepage.aspx?baseid=50.

Brenneman, Richard. “Berkeley Developer’s Big Dreams Dominate Richmond Landscape.” Berkeley Daily Planet, April 26, 2005. http://www.berkeleydaily.org/issue/2005-04-26/article/21243?headline=Berkeley-Developer-s-Big-Dreams-Dominate-Richmond-Landscape-By-RICHARD-BRENNEMAN.

———. “Lawsuit Challenges Point Molate Casino. Category: News from The Berkeley Daily Planet – Thursday January 29, 2009,” January 28, 2009. http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2009-01-29/article/32111?headline=Lawsuit-Challenges-Point-Molate-Casino.

———. “Point Molate Casino Gets Fast-Track Status. Category: Front Page News from The Berkeley Daily Planet – Thursday June 12, 2008.” Newspaper, June 12, 2009. http://www.berkeleydaily.org/issue/2008-06-12/article/30235?headline=Point-Molate-Casino-Gets-Fast-Track-Status.

———. “State Attorney General Joins Point Molate Casino Fight.” Berkeley Daily Planet, April 22, 2009. http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2005-04-22/article/21212?headline=State-Attorney-General-Joins-Point-Molate-Casino-Fight-By-RICHARD-BRENNEMAN&status=301.

“Chevron Energy and Hydrogen Renewal Project.” Corporation. Chevron, Spring 2009. http://www.chevron.com/products/sitelets/richmond/renewal/.

“Draft Environmental Impact Statement / Environmental Impact Report.” http://www.pointmolateeis-eir.com/documents/draft_eis-eir/report.htm.

Fronistas, Phoebe. “Before Napa, there was Winehaven.” Blog. Richmond Confidential, October 13, 2009. http://richmondconfidential.org/2009/10/13/before-napa-there-was-winehaven/.

Hoch, Andrea Lynn. Letter. “Governor Letter Against Pt Molate,” October 12, 2009. http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B2Vh92XtfvhnNWRkYjNmMTktMjFkYS00NDVlLTk4NjItYTdhNTU3OTA0NTU4&hl=en.

“Indian Gaming in California.” http://igs.berkeley.edu/library/htIndianGaming.htm#Topic1.

Korosec, Kristen. “Exxon, Chevron Win in a Loser Year for Top 500 Companies | BNET Energy Blog | BNET.” News. BNET, April 20, 2009. http://industry.bnet.com/energy/10001114/exxon-chevron-win-in-a-loser-year-for-top-500-companies/.

“Richmond leads per-capital murder rate in California.” San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 2008. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/06/10/state/n103604D95.DTL.

“Richmond OKs Point Molate casino project.” Contra Costa Times, November 10, 2004. http://www.tombutt.com/forum/2004/041111.htm.

Rosen Lum, Rebecca. “ChevronTexaco Hires Willie Brown to Undo the Deal.” Contra Costa Times, November 11, 2004.

Santiago, Chiori. “Betting on Point Molate.” Bay Nature, 2005. http://www.baynature.org/articles/jul-sep-2005/betting-on-point-molate.

Simerman, John. “County ready to back Point Molate casino plan – ContraCostaTimes.com,” October 31, 2009. http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_13685421?source=most_emailed.

Tam, Katherine. “Sides still divided over Richmond casino-hotel plan’s potential impact – Inside Bay Area.” Oakland Tribune, September 19, 2009. http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_13368891.

Vega, Cecilia. “Point Molate Casino On Track After City Council OKs Proposal.” http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/11/11/BAG869PFRE1.DTL.

Weinstein, David. “Storming the Castle.” Preservation Magazine, July 25, 2009. http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/story-of-the-week/2003/Storming-the-Castle.html.

Williams, Susan. “Point Molate: Waterfront Dream or Terrorist Nightmare?,” October 9, 2009. http://www.baycrossings.com/Archives/2003/09_October/point_molate_waterfront_dream_or_terrorist_nightmare.htm.

Related posts:

1. Richmond Shipyard #3 Slips
2. Pripyat, Chernobyl, and the Future of Nuclear Power
3. An Abandoned Mansion from Lebanon’s Past

"Ghost Ships" An Image of the J Row of the Mothball Fleet, with the U.S.S. President at the forefront - © Amy Heiden

Floating in the brackish waters of Suisun Bay is a fleet of decaying ships, many which have outlived their useful lives. Known as the Ghost Fleet, a few of these ladies of the deep have survived long enough to serve in three wars.

Gaining access to these closely-watched vessels is a privilege given to a chosen few. Fellow photographer and friend, Amy Heiden, was one of those few – and her recent story about visiting one of the ships (the AS-32 U.S.S. Holland, a 1960s-era Hunley-class submarine tender) is recounted in vivid detail on her website.

The U.S.S. Holland in Spain - Courtesy USSHolland.org, via Amy Heiden.

Amy’s trip to the Holland holds a special place in my heart, particularly because I’m somewhat obsessed with the history of all things nuclear and radioactive. Just browse around this site, and you will become well aware of my unhealthy obsession. So, it goes without saying that her experience on the ship was a true treat. After all: The Holland carried Poseidon warheads – gigantic, menacing submarine-based rockets that traveled 8,000 miles per hour with a payload of up to 14 reentry vehicles (viz. nuclear warheads!). But let’s allow Amy’s words to speak for themselves, shall we?:

“As we descended down a ladder, I reached up to turn on my headlamp, only to discover that we were immersed inside the mess, surrounded by plastic blue tables and yellow seats. Our flashlights blinded our eyes as the beams reflected off the metal cabinets covering the walls. Across the room, I noticed an old soda fountain, complete with drink labels that appeared to have been typed by a computer.”

Later, as Amy follows a cadre of experienced mothball aficionados inside the Holland, she is showna gigantic cargo hold that vertically spans the entire keel of the ship. According to the interview she conducted with a former crew member, the space she saw once held the radioactive waste-water of nuclear-armed submarines. Of course (we can only hope!), Amy arrived in this space long after its cleanup rendered it safe to explore.

"Vertigo" - the once-radioactive modified hull of the U.S.S. Holland a Vietnam-era submarine tender - © Amy Heiden

Amy’s experience is just one of many she’s had. In all she’s taken nearly a half-dozen journeys out to the mothball fleet. And her important documentation couldn’t have come at a better time. The Obama administration – rightly so – has made the removal and dismantling of the toxic ships a top environmental priority. As a result, MARAD is scrambling to find suitable shipyards that will recycle the ships in the most environmentally benign manner. In the last few months, two of the ships that the Suisun Bay fleet hosted have been cleaned and exported to the shipyards in Texas. It’s likely that – soon – Mare Island Naval Shipyard (an abandoned and mothballed naval shipyard in and of itself) will be another facility equipped for handling this delicate and important task.

This image - generously provided through the exhaustive research of Amy, and courtesy of MARAD - shows the Naval Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) in the 1950s, when 400 ships were moored along the shores of Suisun Bay.

At one point soon after the second World War, the NDRF fleet held 2,277 ships. Today, that number has dwindled to 230 ships (between 2003 and 2007 alone, 44 ships were removed from the fleet). I’m honored to know someone who has taken up the important task of documenting these relics of history before they’re gone forever. I hope you will take a look at Amy’s story. Do browse around, too, if you have the inclination; Amy’s dedication to photographing the pieces of the past extends far beyond the fascinating journey she narrates in her story about the Holland – nay, even her trips to the NDRF.

Further Reading

Amy’s detailed narrative of visiting the fleet

KQED’s map with history and citations of ship names and dates

San Francisco Chronicle : NDRF cleanup efforts

Related posts:

1. Mothball Fleets and the SS Red Oak Victory
2. Inside a Titan 1 Missile Base
3. Auschwitz “Death Camp” Blueprints Discovered in Berlin Apartment

We were about four days into our urgent scurry through the abandoned entropication of Chicago and Detroit. We stared, eyes agape at the crumbling edifices that rolled by our window like a spinning zoetrope; perhaps, for some, zoetrope isn’t the right word. In the late 19th century, daedalum was more common. The translation isn’t lost in the analogy. When the daedalum was named thus, it referred to an amusement that would have led to sin. It literally was translated, “wheel of the devil.”

So depending on how you look at it, Detroit – as seen through the passenger-side window of our moving bubbles – was either the daedalum, or the zoetrope, whatever one may choose in proclivity. As a zoetrope, Detroit is an apparitional narrative of glory and achievement, but seen through the eyes of the daedalum, it is a city of fire and brimstone. Perhaps most importantly, much like any other city in the U.S., it could lead to any number of rebellious actions.

The four of us parked in front of the downtown park and focused on the surrounding buildings. We knew that the boulevard’s most significant buildings would be largely vacant. And looking at all of these sad, empty reminders of the past, I couldn’t help but imagine Detroit as Richard Nickel had with Chicago, four decades earlier. Nickel’s Chicago of 1968 was undergoing its own “urban renewal,” and the Windy City was brimming with bold buildings from a grand past.

Richard Nickel’s Chicago, however, was no longer the city of the Columbian Exposition. The breakup of the city’s two most celebrated architects, Sullivan & Adler – akin to the sour music that usually results after a semi-decent rock band parts – meant that their architectural prowess fizzled. When Nickel, a former paratrooper, arrived back in his home town from the Korean War, he saw that the buildings of his childhood – the buildings that flourished under Adler & Sullivan – were quickly disappearing.

His obsession started with a thesis for the photography school that his GI bill helped fund. Under the tutelage of Aaaron Siskind, he set out on an ambitious project: The complete cataloguing of every building designed by Louis Sullivan. Some of Sullivan’s commissions were unknown; and the problem was compounded by the fact that all of the architectural notes and blueprints had ironically gone the same way as the buildings that burned in the Great Chicago fire of 1874 – a fire which had inspired so many Chicago architects to build some of the most awe-inspiring architecture of our modern time. Perhaps, it was better as such, because without that need for documentation Nickel would probably have never been inspired to uncover the unknown Sullivan buildings and photograph them with such contemplative purpose.

But there we were in Detroit – a place that was so foreign to us that I personally felt that I had little right to pontificate on its lot. Why should I judge this place? I’m an outsider, an invader, a curious spectator, an overzealous eavesdropper. Yet, I couldn’t help but judge. I know Detroiters have great pride in their city – as they should. But why not put that pride into action? Detroit has enormous wealth – but it’s not the wealth that most would recognize. It’s an architectural wealth that competes with the greatest urban city centers in the U.S. Why not put that wealth to use. Is it really too simple of a solution?

We strolled through the empty boulevards of Woodward Avenue and looked up at the empty windows. After spending four days touring crumbling architecture, many of us had already had enough – at least temporarily. Detroit’s beauty was quickly fading in its reality. We needed something new, inspiring to reinvigorate our creative gumption. And there I stopped, looking up at the jewel box in front of me – the iconic Farwell Building – Detroit’s most beautiful and least appreciated possession. What Detroit borrowed from Chicago – namely its style of architecture – it made better in the Farwell.

When Richard Nickel saw the Garrick, his jaw dropped. “Nothing can replace the joy and satisfaction this single building has given me. No new building in Chicago, be they of the finest materials, appears to offer what the Garrick does: The mind and heart of a great man.” Nickel understood the subtle metaphor of the building in his own life – and the effect that great architecture has on one’s understanding of humanity, and – most importantly – its inextricable connection to Nature.

We had taken considerable physical risk to reach the inside of the Farwell, but I knew immediately that it was my Garrick. I believe that great buildings (and great built landscapes for that matter) form a bond with oneself akin to that of a human being; a neglected building evokes the same empathy as a broken and neglected human. Sure, it may sound like blasphemy. After all, it is an inanimate object. But contained within a building is its own little zoetrope, its own story told through obsolescence. They are stories told through clues that – should you fail to pay attention to the spinning of the wheel – you could easily miss the whole narrative.

Nickel paid the ultimate price for his photography. In 1974, after sneaking past demolition crews at the Chicago Stock Exchange, he disappeared deep in the rubble of “his” building. But the story told through his life and death has captivated generations of preservationists and photographers. It’s not only a story of the death of a glorious man, but also that of a glorious building. And fittingly – the two of them collapsed into oblivion together, as if to mock the world that so easily discards the past. Fittingly, too, was how Louis Sullivan’s philosophies applied just as much to Nickel himself as they did to the buildings that Sullivan spent his life designing. “And decay proceeds as inevitably as growth,” Sullivan wrote. “Function is declined, structures disintegrate, differentiation is blurred, the fabric dissolves, life disappears, death appears, time engulfed. The eternal life falls. Out of oblivion into oblivion, so goes the drama of creative things.”

Related posts:

1. Cold Storage Building: World’s Fair at Chicago
2. Frank Lloyd Wright and His Forgotten Larkin Building
3. The 1893 Fair That Changed the World

This is the Tunnel leading to the orginal (now exploded) Titan 1 Operational Systems Test Facility on Vandenberg

I see urban exploration as the hobby of appreciating things which, decades after their creation, still manage to make us open our jaws agape at the ingenuity of the human soul. Often, however, such ingenuity is misplaced in hubris. Vandenberg was a logical step at illustrating such schizophrenia of the technocratic imagination – for it was at Vandenberg that our love of all things Nuclear and Ballistic began to take its true Frankenstonian shape.

In January of 2008, soon after my first trip to Neverland, the planning phase for a new, riskier operation was already being laid.  In the months that followed January of ’08, Scott and I would make numerous  forays into  Neverland, but – as it often is with our trips – we invariably tried to find things to do while waiting for the sun to drop below the horizon.

The endangered snowy plover (courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

After all, a trip to Neverland during the day would have been significantly more risky, given the amount of gardeners and caretakers that circulated on the property. On the other hand, gallivanting around an active military base, we figured, would probably best be done during the day. It just so happened, Vandenberg Air Force Base (a mere 30 minutes away from Neverland) was a popular haunt for the rare Snowy Plover (a cause célèbre for all well-informed ornithologists). And the Snowy Plover would make the perfect alibi for the Urbex Desperadoes we had become. On our second trip to Neverland, we added a brief foray out to Vandenberg to our itinerary (really just to “scope” the situation).

Although the base itself is closed to the public, certain portions on the far South and Northeastern side are accessible. On the South side, a sleepy rail station of Surf serves as a bucolic, publicly accessible beach – albeit closely monitored by Vandenberg Security Forces.  In the case of the Northeast side of the base, the Marshalia Ranch golf course is sometimes – though not always – available for public use. My frequent drives out to the edges of Marshalia Ranch confirmed that it, too, is a popular hangout for the 30th Security Forces Squadron.

A member of the Vandenberg 30th Security Forces Squadron at a weightlifting competition at Venice Beach (courtesy Vandenberg AFB Office of Public Relations)

I knew that the consequences of exploring Vandenberg at night could be dire; the “SF,” as the security forces of Vandenberg are known, aren’t your typical slovenly security guards. These protectors of Freedom carry M4 assault rifles and – as you can see in the photo above – can easily crush people like me between their fingers. However, I had strong reason to consider risking it – stupid, maybe, but certainly an alluring prospect. Why, you ask?

Vandenberg, for those of you who don’t know, is a proverbial Disneyland for Cold War era missile defense sites. Atlas D, Atlas E, Atlas F, Titan I, Titan II, Minuteman, Peacekeeper, Thor — you name it and Vandenberg had it. It’s a massive base, 250 square miles in all. But in the vast 3,537,441 square miles that make up the United States land area, it is quite literally a crumb of the total cake. Soon, it had become an executive decision: Vandenberg was my next step in a longer journey and goal (but an increasingly spectral and dangerous journey).

If Vandenberg as a whole is the Disneyland of Missile Defense, then the Northern side of the base would be the equivalent of Frontierland – the place where all of it was born during the Missile Gold Rush of 1959. Most compelling to explorers of missile defense sites such as myself, Vandenberg North was also where the early missile programs died by the late 1960s. In the 1970s Vandenberg North has been abandoned in place of Vandenberg South. Today, the bones of the past at Vandenberg North are ripe for exploration. The old sites had four decades to decay and, in the interim, they had become something of a beautiful sight of their own merit.

But getting inside the perimeter of Vandenberg North isn’t as easy as it seems. Though we had our alibi (we had developed a new-found interest in bird watching), we still didn’t have a way in.  All the roads inside of the base (and thus to the front door of our underground missile sites) were completely sealed off by sentry stations and road blocks.  Security forces regularly patrolled the roads. The sky was filled with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with infrared cameras. Admittedly, part of what appealed to me was the risk. Some of my recent successful forays had given me a brazen confidence. As part of the MacGyver Generation, I also reveled in the potential of being part of an elite few who had managed to infiltrate an active base undetected. Stupid, yes, but certainly alluring.

Again, members of the Vandenberg 30th Security Forces Squadron - this time training in the field, instead of lifting weights.

The decision started relatively inauspiciously. It began as a terse exchange via email on January 15 of 2008, soon after the three of us had infiltrated and photographed the Sutter Buttes Titan I complex at Beale AFB:

STEPHEN: Are there any underground missile bases other than Titan and Atlas that are abandoned? Are there any Atlas silos that are available to explore [in California]? I heard the Lincoln Titan site is filled with water, anybody have confirmation?

SCOTT: I think the Atlas sites are mostly in the Midwest. There are always the Titan IIs, but those are definitely far, far away. There must be some Nikes around, though…

ME: The first Titan test silos are in the Vandy base, but those are on an active base, as you know.  I still believe they’re accessible, but the risk would be significant.

STEPHEN: Yeah, I might be crazy, but I’m not stupid.  Invading an active base is beyond stupid.  There might be the chance of ‘official’ access to Vandenberg.  Jon, you’re a student at a reputable university who could make a request for access that might actually be listened to.  Or we could just go to the museum, but I hate museums. Was the minuteman missile stored in a silo?

ME: Well the thing about Vandy is that it’s separated into two sectors — the active part, and the semi-abandoned part.  The semi-abandoned part is apparently a popular haunt of bird-watchers, and parts (but not the missile base parts) are open to the public…

STEPHEN: Hey guys, I’m also a devoted bird watcher intent on seeing the silo parakeet in its natural habitat!  Let’s go ‘bird-watching’ on Vandy and track the rarely seen species into its underground lair! Jon, I know you’ve been looking at Vandy.  We’ll have to talk about this on our drive down to Jacko’s place (Neverland).  What’s our schedule by the way?  I need to start planning.

By February 29th, we found ourselves in an overflow parking lot near the Marshalia Ranch golf course. Air Force brass teed off within a few hundred feet of us. Stephen, in his Jeep, turned off the road and towards a pre-designated parking space. We began walking towards our target – the defunct Operational Systems Test Facility, which was the first underground missile base in the United States.

A map of the Operational Systems Test Facility - our first target.

Our “scoping” trip soon turned into a pact to give it a go if we felt safe to do so. We walked within the perimeter of the base and found ourselves within 100 yards of the OSTF. The three of us knew the smell of an abandoned Titan base well. The smell of Titan decay lingers in the surrounding air and – for me – it had slowly become something of an evocative and irresistible scent (what can I say, I’m weird).

As we ducked under the bushes in broad daylight we conferred over the final plans for the last leg towards the silo.  That’s when we saw a white sedan barreling down the road. Sure enough, it was an SF patrol, and he seemed to have known we were there. We saw the SF pull on to a dirt road that led to our trail. Immediately, we turned around and started running back toward Stephen’s Jeep.

Apparently, Vandenberg was teeming with patrols during the day, and a day trip would be impossible. Any passing car could easily evince us from the road that was directly in the path towards the OSTF. We breathed a sigh of relief when we arrived at the Jeep. It was then that we decided any future trip would need to be done at night. We also knew, should we be caught at night, the consequences would be exponentially more severe. At night, we couldn’t pose as avid ornithologists. If caught at night, we would become potential terrorist suspects.

Stephen didn’t show for the second trip to Vandenberg, but we found an able stand-in for him in Aaron. We arrived at Marshalia Ranch around dusk and parked in the overflow lot. The three of us hopped out of the truck and began the hump over to the OSTF – just as we had on our first trip. All of us agreed to keep our flashlights off until we were inside the missile facility. The moon had served as an excellent source of low-level illumination – and, together, we discussed what the protocol would be, should another SF be hot on our trail.

Then it came – this time as a white SUV speeding down the paved road that separated us from the OSTF. Aaron, Scott, and I watched the headlights approach our crossing point. We barely had enough time to drop to the ground and lay low. The car passed, and we continued across the paved road, looking like nimble roadrunners on a desert stretch of asphalt at night. Once across the road, we were separated from the OSTF only by a few hundred feet and a rusty chain-link fence. We squeezed through what seemed like a miniscule hole in the fence and began poking around the remnants of the silo, which had gone through its own travails to become what it was when we saw it.

On Saturday evening, 3 December 1960, a full rehearsal short of actual launch was being conducted by Robert Rhodus, the Martin Company OSTF test conductor. It was the ninth attempt – all of the other attempts had failed due to minor equipment malfunctions. The missile was loaded with liquid oxygen, it was raised to the surface from the silo, and the countdown began. The test was a success, and everyone involved was relieved of their duties. The missile began to be lowered back into the silo, where the propellant probe crew was tasked with reconnecting the hose to offload the oxidizer, but something went horribly wrong.

According to the account of retired USAF CMSGT Les Lawson, relayed to me via email, the elevator was lowered using the “down fast circuit,” instead of the “down slow” mode (which was required for a fully fueled missile). Upon realizing he had done this, the operator quickly switched the mode to down slow and the system responded by braking suddenly.

“The sudden forces on the platform caused the entire support structure to lurch,” Said Lawson, “The hydraulic reservoir located on the upper side of the silo tilted enough to spill hydraulic fluid onto the braking system.” From there, the entire braking system was compromised and the missile began an uncontrollable descent to the bottom of the silo, where LOX and RP1 mixed, causing a massive explosion.

Rhodus watched the entire event transpire from a television screen, about 1/4-mile away, and he “realized with some trepidation that, unlike the buried operational control centers, the room he was in had only 12 inches of dirt on top, not much protection from the tons of concrete that were raining down all around. He also realized it was far too late to run.” Nearby airmen were watching the events on television too – and the SLTF crew, not more than 1,200 feet directly west of the OSTF, saw the “entire elevator assembly, known as the crib, and missile launcher, a total of 160 tons of structural steel, come out of the silo, tumbling up out of the searchlight beams ‘in slow motion.’” In the years that followed, enormous chunks of concrete could be seen on the hills near the Titan I facility, and a complete reference system gyro was found on the Marshalia Ranch Golf Course, more than a mile away from the blast site.

The exploding remnants of the Operational System Test Facility. The 160-ton steel crib assembly lurched out of the silo. On our journey, nothing remained of the crib (which was likely scrapped), but the silo was still there.

Scott, Aaron, and I stood hundreds of feet above the old superstructure of the silo, and looked deep down into the abyss of the disaster area. Over the years, the exploded cylinder had filled with water – and that water had taken on an almost radioactive-looking green appearance, likely from algae that blossomed prodigiously within the stagnant pool. Dead animals were floating in the water. Across the silo, the equipment and fueling terminals stood. Their reinforced capstones made the gigantic, exposed cylinders look like the rooks of medieval castles.

The remnants of the equipment terminal, nearby the OSTF launch assembly. Though this particular silo didn't sustain quite as much damage, its cap was thrown high into the sky, leaving its top exposed to the elements.

It was the most incredible man-made structure I had ever seen in my life. I never had a true sense of the massive scale of a Titan silo until I saw it as I did that night – fully exposed from the outside, maimed by a massive explosion, and slowly returning to the nature it had once usurped.

The three of us squeezed through the window of an above-ground, derelict building. We found old technical specs and blueprints related to the OSTF program. In a back corner of the building, a cavernous passageway led to rooms that went underground. Scott and I fumbled across holes in the floor that once held data cables. We found an old HVAC system and continued through a T-junction to corrugated steel tube that resembled the Titan tunnels at the Sutter Butte site in Northern California (which we had explored just months earlier). The air in that tunnel was filled with the electricity of discovery and our hearts were racing in anticipation.

We pushed aside a blast door and looked down towards an antenna silo – fully intact and carrying a pristine and authentic Titan 1 radome antenna, complete with a canvas inflatable sphere.  This was what the writer of “Titan 1 Epitaph,” whom I’ve interviewed in the past , calls “a very complex system indeed… a radio-inertial missile guidance and tracking package representing, at the time, some of the very latest in technology and miniaturization in solid state electronics.” It was the full system designed by Bell Laboratories and a priceless relic that played a pivotal role in American history. The Western Electric Missile Guidance system (known as an AN/GRW-5 by technocrats) was so important that Titan bases contained two of them for redundancy – one of which could not be raised above-ground unless the other was lowered below-ground.

The schematic for the VAFB OSTF antenna terminal. Because this was a testing phase terminal, it wasn't designed in the same way that all other Titan 1 base antennae were configured. This is a truly one-of-a-kind design.

The pristine inflatable canvas radome of the Titan 1 antenna. I haven't seen anything in a Titan base as well preserved as this was.

Scott and I looked at each other. We had become so accustomed to whispering, that – at first – we hesitated to let out a sound. Then, in a burst of excitement, we hollered in ecstatic glory. A chest bump later, and a few words of congratulation was all it took. We had just seen what few civilians had been privileged to see, and it was sitting there for us to photograph and share with the world. We immediately broke out our camera packs and began a methodical documentation of the two underground antenna silos.

From the bottom of the OSTF antenna terminal, looking up.

The night eventually came to an end, and by dawn we were walking on the public road to our vehicle. We drove 15 miles to an abandoned diatomite mine and I laid my sleeping bag down to rest in the powdery mine tailings. The trip was a success, but Scott and I both knew that it wouldn’t be our last trip to Vandenberg…

It didn’t take long for us to return to Vandenberg – and this time it was decided that we would spend the entire weekend on the base – dwelling during the day underground, and returning topside at night to explore complexes and traverse to other sites.  Our first destination was the Atlas F, which is similar to a Titan II base in layout and configuration.  Upon exploring the Atlas F, we would head south to a grouping of various Atlas D and E pads, both of which had very little in the way of underground space but plenty of interesting accoutrements and panels to shoot.

Our visit to the Atlas F was a hurried attempt with a set time limit.  Our entire route was comprised entirely of overland walking, across miles and miles of scrub, ice plant, and sandy dunes.  Both of us were well aware of the impending sunrise; if we were to find ourselves out of range of a sufficient place of cover by daylight, then we could potentially be seen by patrolling SF. This was compounded by the fact that very little shrubbery existed for such a purpose – so the abandoned missile complexes themselves were our only hope of hiding. The nearest Atlas E was over a mile-and-a-half away and it was 4 A.M. by the time we exited the Atlas F blast door.

About a 1/2-mile away from the Atlas F, on our way to a place of cover, Scott looked over at me and his eyes widened. “Where is your tripod?,” he queried. I looked down and noticed it was gone. I left it at the Atlas F. It was 4:30, and I would lose about 30 minutes going back to get it. Scott laid down in the sand in exasperation, and I began my jog back to retrieve the tripod. I returned about 30 minutes later. Morning birds began making their sounds and the early signs of dawn appeared far across the Casmalia Mountains in the horizon. Our time was running short, and in hushed whispers of urgency we both soon became out of breath.

The next hour was a true race against time. On the route to our next stop, there were numerous active buildings that dotted the Vandenberg landscape. The fact was: Vandenberg North was not truly “abandoned.” Parts of the North are occupied by active Minuteman complexes, and Reagan had instituted a rail-based, garrison missile defense system in the 80s known as the Peacekeeper program.  These nuclear warheads were partly based in Vandenberg, and later became active at Mountain Home AFB in Wyoming.

A schematic of a peacekeeper missile being loaded into its launch tube {click for a larger view}.

Peacekeepers were underground missiles, much like Titans… but on steroids. Each of these solid-fuel missiles could carry 10 REVs (re-entry vehicles), and each REV was capable of carrying a MK 21 nuclear payload. Vandenberg North was pockmarked with underground bunkers that protected the Peacekeeper missiles on rail cars. When the boxcars were not being used, they were stored in the super-hardened bunkers. Buildings with electricity on Vandenberg North were likely related to this program – even though the Peacekeeper program was fully deactivated by 2003. Whether or not these buildings contained anything of strategic importance, Scott, nor I would never truly know. Looking at the siren-like warning lights on the building, we knew that we didn’t wish to find out, so we avoided these buildings as much as possible (unavoidably getting as close as 100 feet away in a few instances).

Our pace was quickening and the corona of the sun was appearing over the tips of the mountains in the distance. We were running out of time. A truck drove up to one of the active buildings behind us; if he had looked in our direction, it was certain he would have seen us. Partly to hide from the truck, Scott and I found an old, overgrown road, which I soon recognized from my mental map of the base. We were close to our destination, and a few minutes later we found ourselves crawling under a rusty fence (one of many rusty fences in this epic journey). We would lay low for a few hours while exploring the Atlas E, take a quick nap, and then continue to the most harrowing leg of the hike.

Sleeping at the Atlas E site was a welcome reprieve. When one is running on adrenaline, one’s bodily functions are in overdrive. The heart rate stays at a steady high. Sweating is more frequent, and body movements are twitchy and unpredictable. Scott and I had been continuously operating on adrenaline all night. When we reached the hard asphalt floor of the well-hidden Atlas E complex, it could have just as well been a billowing bed, filled with perfectly fluffed down pillows. I lay down and was asleep within seconds; I happened to choose a location that was almost directly under what would have once been an 82.5-foot Atlas E Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. I can honestly say, now, that the best nap I’ve ever had was directly below the domain of a nuclear missile – and it’s strange to say this, but I felt safe. I awoke to the sound of a Blackhawk helicopter that was fanning the base in patrol. Scott was taking a picture of me splayed on the floor with his cell phone. We got to our feet and began the portion of the trip that would be most challenging.

Vandenberg North is cut off from Vandenberg South by an impenetrable blanket of vegetation that follows the windy course of San Antonio Creek. There is no possible route across the water other than two dangerous and highly visible crossings. On our way in, we chose the railroad crossing to reach the historic 576th Strategic Missile Squadron – an area rife with both Titan II and Atlas D missile complexes. This required walking a frequently traveled Amtrak railroad trestle hundreds of feet above the canyon. We would return to our vehicle through a different route (which I’ll describe later).

A satellite view of the abandoned bases we chose to explore during our 36-hour overland journey. The red warning triangles were items I marked on the map to avoid - knowing that they might potentially be active Peacekeeper garrison facilities.

After crossing the trestle with little trouble (but a mere minutes before another Amtrak train had careened across the canyon), Scott and I set our sights on our first Titan II. We hopped another rusty fence (see a theme here?) and surveyed the topside conditions for a good entry route. Scott found an emergency exit and began climbing down.

“Oh Shit!!!!” Scott whispered loudly. Immediately after I heard him, a bat swirled around his head, coming from deep within the emergency exit. It flew around Scott’s face and exited the ladder-way. Scott dropped a small rock down the tube to ensure that any bats made their way out and then headed down the ladder. The space of the ladder, approximately 24 inches in diameter, was much too small for me to wear my backpack, so I strapped it in front of me and slowly descended about 100 feet to the bottom of the underground Titan II Control Dome. With a full respirator attached to my face, I felt like an astronaut, boldly stepping into the domain of an extraterrestrial spaceship. The view was incredible. Control panels and ceiling panels were haphazardly strewn across the floor. Rust mixed with benzene – colors that are so unnatural, they make the environment seem more artificial than anything I’d seen in my life.

Inside a Titan II control dome at Vandenberg AFB

Surely everything in the Titan II control domain was artificial, but one could see constant evidence of the intrusion of nature all around: Bats roosting in a place you couldn’t think anything living could survive in, water seeping , cave crickets searching for anything to dine on.  It was beyond surreal. It was unreal. The latest graffiti in the tunnel, potentially from other military men who had spent their R&R time on the base in the best way possible, dated back to the 1970s. Graffiti, overall, was relatively sparse – a welcome surprise, because all of the past silos I had explored in Colorado and Northern California came littered with a liberal smattering of monikers from multiple generations of explorers.

Like we had done in the other complexes, Scott and I busted out our equipment and began the tough work of illuminating our scenes. We snapped a few photos in the access tunnel and walked towards the acoustically designed Titan II silo.

Seeing the interior of a Titan II silo is a rare gift. Under the terms of the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) with the U.S.S.R., most Titan II silos were deliberately destroyed in the mid-1980s. Of the 54 Titan II bases built in the U.S., only a few silos remain unmolested. As far as I know, there is only one original Titan II silo that has its launch doors completely open to the elements – and we were at it. This provided an unprecedented opportunity to photograph the silo illuminated by natural moonlight – both from the inside and outside. We were hesitant to leave, but we knew that our time was running short, so we walked another 1/2-mile to our final site and the most historically compelling: The 576^th SMS Atlas D trio.

The Titan II silo from above - fully exposed to the sky, and illuminated by a combination of the moon and a handheld flashlight.

The 576^th Squadron of Atlas D’s comprises three fully intact bases, filled to the brim with original equipment, cables, and artifacts. There was so much to see that we decided on only one complex in the interest of time. We selected the only Atlas D site on the base with its original Gantry, which was easy to spot in the midnight sky. Much like the irresistible scent of a Titan missile, this symbol of our desire had become its own navigation beacon. With our eyes pointed towards the gantry, we walked in a beeline from 395-B (the Titan II that had just de-virginized us). During this walk, I had to stop to really look. The 576^th Squadron is on a bluff overlooking the entire Northern Portion of the base.  I used a brief break in our walk to look out towards the moonlit landscape, and to take note of our accomplishments.

The gantry of the Atlas D ICBM at Vandenberg AFB {click for larger view}

From my vantage, I saw it all – the Atlas F was more than five miles as the crow flies. With the full moon at its zenith, things that were miles away from that bluff were eerily easy to see – the blinking green status lights of the active Peacekeeper buildings, the shadowy form of the Atlas E with its diagonally descending personnel tunnel, the distant lights of active Minuteman bases. All of it seemed like a ghostly dream – much like those dreams you wake from, only to remember the most prosaic of details. And yet, seeing it all – even while actively involved in the process of exploration – immediately made me miss the trip.  I knew that we had about 8 hours until it was completely over, and I soon regretted the notion of leaving this strange post-atomic, no-man’s land.

“Ready to move?” Scott chimed in. He had just finished a granola bar, while I polished off my final orange. Even if I wanted to stay an extra day, I knew it meant going without food or water – a prospect that didn’t seem worth the extra time on base after the first bout of hunger set in.

We arrived at the Atlas D, and it was everything we had hoped it would be: Launch consoles; tanks of liquid nitrogen; lines connecting rocket fuel through snakelike arrangements underground; vast, lengthy tunnels that carried communication and power cables across the complex. It was a beautiful capstone to a trip steeped in visual splendor – and a sobering monument to the military industrial complex – something that even Mercury could even look down upon from the skies of the Roman gods and admire from afar.

Despite how much I bungled and bombasted my way through barriers and sentries in subsequent explorations, nothing could quite match the experience I had with Scott during those fidgety 36 hours. Neverland was only the first notch on a long-lasting relationship with pushing the limits; Vandenberg was a chunk. Soon, I would find myself in an abandoned skyscraper worth $118 million. My ethos would evolve even further when I found myself in a steel factory in Detroit, which was purportedly protected by a shotgun wielding wacko (who actually turned out to be a nice guy). But Vandenberg topped them all.

Scott and I nearly lost each other, deep in the base at 3 A.M. that night. Our phones weren’t working and we had separated somewhere along an overland shortcut to the bridge that crossed San Carlos Creek. For 20 minutes, I frantically tried dialing until my phone’s battery was near death. I rolled through chaparral and descried El Rancho Road (our escape route home) from the top of the bluff.

Down at a turnoff on the side of the road I saw Scott’s dark, pensive frame. We met at the bottom of the bluff and planned the final and most dangerous portion of our epic trip. SF vehicles were rolling back and forth across the bridge. The bridge itself, which was a skyway traversing the entire San Carlos Creek wetland, was much longer than we had imagined while looking at the satellite images.

Considering the frequency with which patrol cars traveled back and forth across the bridge, I indicated to Scott that we could probably make it about halfway across the 300-yard bridge before an SF vehicle would arrive – upon which we would have no place to hide. Scott concurred. The pinch was in, and we had no way out. We briefly considered going back to the railroad trestle, but that would have meant two more days of overland hiking – without food or water. We decided it prudent to at least walk to the bridge to see if there was a possible way across by going under it.

“Look,” I whispered, pointing to the utility pipes hidden behind the cement guardrails on each side of the bridge. “I think we can bail over the side and lay low until the car passes.” We tested the load carrying capacity of the pipes by going on them together. They held our weight. We had to start soon. It was almost dawn, so we both grabbed our gear and began running across the gray, cement skyway. We were lucky, at least until the final 100 yards. It was then that Scott saw the headlights of a distant SF. We swiftly hopped over the side barrier and lay on the utility pipes. The SF passed and we returned to the Skyway, on to our freedom.

We arrived at the Marshalia Ranch Golf Course a full 36 hours after we began our trip. We had traversed twice over chasms; we had seen the entire nuclear smorgasbord of Cold War America; we had evaded a half-dozen SF patrol cars; and every bone in our body ached from 16 miles of hiking on adrenaline. It was finally over.

Part of the guidance system for the Titan 1 base adjoining the OSTF.

I shook Scott’s hand in congratulations and started my long drive home. Halfway up Highway-101 (the road that had so often been my thoroughfare of adventure) I realized that the jacket pocket in which I had stashed my memory card had a hole in it. Every photo was lost. The trip, however, was not entirely lost. I wrote about it because I wanted to remind myself that those pictures aren’t the only thing that matter. If a picture is worth a thousand words – well, then – this particular collection of words is worth at least four.

Perhaps I look at it all so optimistically because of the events that transpired immediately after my return. Often, the biggest blessings come after a difficult journey. I arrived home that evening to discover that my father had a subarachnoid brain hemorrhage. I thought the very worst and threw on a new pair of clothes to fly up to Portland, Oregon. That week I spent in a hospital waiting room was the worst week of my life; by the time I left the hospital, however, it had become the best. My father had fully recovered from something that originally gave him a 10% chance of surviving. It seemed fitting that I emerged from a landscape of Cold, deathly war only to have it conclude in a true story of survival and miracles.

Additional Information

Pete’s description of the Titan 1 radio guidance system

Complete coordinates and details of all abandoned Vandenberg facilities

Related posts:

1. A California Titan Missile Base
2. Inside a Titan 1 Missile Base
3. Fleishhacker Pool – A Strange Journey Through S.F. History

It’s easy to forget – at least for me – the proximity with which our current times coincide with one of the most monumental eras of our modern time. What I speak of is the era of the atomic weapon.

It was only 60 years ago that the doomsday machine was set into motion and Oppenheimer had managed to turn a desert experiment into a national source of pride (which ironically also became the very subject of national paranoia). With the atom, we had managed – if only for that brief moment before the Soviets had discovered the same route – to command primacy in the world stage, unfettered by jingoist competition.

An image by LIFE photographer Ralph Crane, from an unpublished assignment on ICBM missile sites in the 1960s.

But what really has me reeling is not the fact that I underappreciate its proximity to my own generation, but the fact that my own generation knows little or nothing about Nikita Khrushchev, Operation Crossroads, Nagasaki, or Hiroshima.

Today we take little note, yet the undercurrents of a post-atomic society are more relevant than they’ve ever been – they manifest themselves in color-coded threat levels, between the margins of network news, and within the very fabric of our modern think tanks. It’s a purely Hegelian wellspring that runs below the surface of American society, but in its seemingly diminuitive nature, it affects every aspect of our politics.

The satellite photo, taken by GeoEye, shows a nuclear enrichment facility at a military site about 20 miles north-northeast of Qum, and 100 miles southwest of Tehran, Iran.

The fact that Iran is about to have one doesn’t seem surprising any more. After all, North Korea is about to have another and it seems to be the modern day mark of Progress for any self-respecting nation. If not a deterrent, it surely is a bargaining chip.

What I saw tonight reopened my eyes to its true meaning. As a collection of ephemera, gathered together from various war department films, promotional spots, talk shows, and propaganda shorts, Atomic Cafe brings you into the mindset of the 1950s – a time when rapid expansion of the federal government led to Eisenhower’s sober warning about the military industrial complex (when a former general – a war-man – decries the unsustainable rise of a state-sponsered defense industry, well, one just has to listen). Isn’t Eisenhower the man who connected all of these atomic bases by a national highway system?

This film is true because it is unaltered and free from the commentary that taints most documentaries these days. It’s not very often that a film simply speaks for itself. Even the modern documentary is rife with shaky secondary sources and personal, impassioned, commentary from the filmmaker. Though Atomic Cafe has no qualms with establishing its strong stance, it’s a very believeable and naturally affinity-inducing stance.

As an explorer, I often find myself in the creations of that era. I did not live through that time. I have no recollection of what it must have felt like – or how my mind would have wrapped itself around the anima in the air. What I do have, as a humble explorer, are my experiences as an observer and analyzer who has catalogued dozens of these places (from the deepest of contaminated ICBM silos to the tallest industrial escalator). In the former, I had stood in front of the 40-foot-wide 150-foot-deep cylinder in awe of its size and demeanor of power; in the latter, I ascended the rusty escalator links to get a birds eye view of where ships contaminated by nuclear tests in the Bikini Atolls were dismantled.

Atomic Cafe reminds me of a project that has special meaning to me: The collection of dying archival materials – many of which are finding themselves vanishing in the midst of the sheer volume of their existence. And two individuals who have adopted this much-needed cause are Rick and Megan Prelinger. The two of them maintain the Prelinger Archives, a collection of ephemera that has recently taken the notice of the Library of Congress.

It didn’t take a nuclear standoff to destroy much our nation’s cultural heritage – much of it simply vanished because of neglect. For example, the Library of Congress says that only 1 in 10 films made before 1928 exist today. Thankfully, what is presented in Atomic Cafe tells us a little about one of the most influential milestones of the millenia. Where we go from here nobody knows. All we can do about these clippings from the past is talk about them, tell the truth, and make sure that these stories don’t die.

Related posts:

1. Marconi, America, and the Monroe Doctrine
2. Inside a Ghost Fleet Ship – AS-32 U.S.S. Holland
3. Auschwitz “Death Camp” Blueprints Discovered in Berlin Apartment

Stone Opera House Stage Door: Where Ogarita Booth Henderson and her husband, Al, worked with the Floy Crowell troupe.

Editor’s Note: What follows is what will hopefully become a series of articles from Mr. J.T. Colfax, resident of Binghamton, New York.  In late 2006,  J.T. found an entrance to a tunnel in his backyard.  Since then, he has followed the path of the tunnel, from the top of Mt. Prospect, to the bowels of downtown Binghamton. The incredible stories tell about a place little-seen by Binghamton residents, but which includes a history of prohibition-era rum-running, mysterious deaths, and … as you will see in this article … the transplantation of an entire cemetery.  Think of this as an early Halloween treat. Enjoy.

Bubbling forth now is the story of two cemeteries. One, the Binghamton City Cemetery, obliterated by commerce over 100 years ago; the other, Glenwood Cemetery, with a history of neglect stretching equally as long. They were five miles apart, but in 1907, their stories joined together when 1,330 bodies were evicted from the City Cemetery and carted by a team of drays through the freezing winter streets of Binghamton to rest at Glenwood Cemetery.

Mixed within this grisly drama, we give a heavy spotlight to the story of Ogarita Booth Henderson, a resident of Glenwood Cemetery since 1892. Her story will be accorded and afforded the star power to out-shadow the stories of hallowed, forgotten, and neglected lands.

The cemetery stories will follow in more precision and in keeping with this site’s emphasis on LAND. She is an inmate in a beautiful hilltop cemetery on a low-key mountain named Prospect.

The Rita Booth material that follows will be short on words for this reason. There just isn’t enough good information available. Her story will be interpreted here in the merest of nutshells. You will be soon bombarded with photographic depictions of articles related to her death in Binghamton, and you will see that none of them allow you to fully settle in to an understanding of her claim to be the daughter of Lincoln’s “assassinator.”

For now, go into the digital world of factoid presentation. What follows, in a series of photographs of articles, probably constitutes the best collection online of items relating to her story — and that is a shame, for it is not through hyperbole that I make the claim “best collection”; rather, it is through endless hours of searching online, and on microfilm in the Binghamton Library that makes me aware that this collection is both MEAGER and the “best.” I fully hope that someone makes me eat the claim.

Descendants of Ogarita Booth Henderson can be found to this day online seeking more information to prove their point. One can find endless references to people possessing THIS or THAT, which proves some point, but although they have the ability to troll ancestry sites, they seem averse to using the internet to SHOW any documentation.

And, with that rap on the knuckles out of the way, let’s proceed to rove through her story in this photo-voluminous manner, in which you will interpret the story your own way. I point out one more time, though, that Rita Booth rests in Glenwood Cemetery, which received 1,330 bodies in a disruption from the “old” cemetery in 1907. The story of that follows her story, and it is, as Twain would say, “no slouch.”

Because Ogarita Booth Henderson’s story gurgles online in such a way as to truly be a waste of time at this point (Oct. ’09), here is a lump sum nutshell of the story of Rita Booth.

Ogarita Booth Henderson claimed to be the product of a secret marriage between her mother and John Wilkes Booth. Below you will see death notices that include that claim, and also an article from 1885 which does not elaborate on its reason for existing, but includes a mention of her as John Wilkes Booth’s daughter.

Before the presentation of these materials it is expediant to provide a link to a wiki about the situation.

Click to Learn More

The above was not done out of sloth…but it provides the basic gist of her story and leaves us unencumbered to present the following unfiltered material, some of which probably contributed to that story.

Here is a small vault of information from its proper time:

A 1924 Binghamton Press article about Glenwood Cemetery’s history sums up her story like this:

“Mrs. Ogarita Henderson, daughter of John Wilkes Booth, assassinator of Abraham Lincoln was a pretty young actress when she visited Binghamton 35 years ago, while playing her first real character role with a show troupe. She suffered an attack of acute indigestion while here and died suddenly in the Crandall Hotel. She was hurriedly buried in Glenwood Cemetery and her show troupe moved on to the next stand. Her grave, marked only by a small pine tree has been almost forgotten.”

IN this way we can see that the three foot tombstone currently on her grave was not there for at least the first 32 years of her residency in Glenwood Cemetery. As for the remark that the acting troupe immediately moved on, I have found a notice in the April 6th, 1892  Binghamton Herald Republican that the troop actually extended their planned stay by one day, and at the discounted price of 10 cents per ticket. This extension appears in adverts and in a column mention.

Here is how the Binghamton Herald Republican presented the announcement of her April 12th 1892 death in their April 13th 1892 edition:

And here is how the New York Times presented it in their April 15th 1892 edition:

As for Ogarita Booth being shown to claim relation to John Wilkes Booth before her death, there is this, which is from seven years before her death in Binghamton. This is from the New York Times in 1885, and though the meaning of the thrust behind the article is not explained, this article does show that she was able to present herself without apparent question as the daughter of John Wilkes Booth to at least one New York Times reporter.

She was 26 years old at this time:

Below you will see an advertisement for the Floy Crowell troupe from April 5th 1892. Although Rita and her husband Al Henderson are not mentioned, they were among the 19 players in the production of revolving plays that promised, “NO DULL MOMENTS.”

And in every issue of the Binghamton Herald Republican during this period when the Floy Crowell troupe was in town, often only inches away from the show’s advert about their Opera House appearances, and including the issue that announced her death…there was also this advertisement for the cemetery that soon received her corpse. I have spent a lot of time on looking at Binghamton microfilm papers and I am not familiar with any other period in which the Glenwood Cemetery advertised so blatantly, expensively, or at all. The photo below is of an advert that was running daily during this period. This is shown at the end of the Rita Booth portion of this essay, but, those who intend to continue on to the coming information about the digging up of 1,330 bodies and their trek through town, should take note of the name HULBERT at the bottom of the advert. That is Hulbert SENIOR,..and we will meet his son at an elderly age when we take the bright lights off Miss Booth, and return to discussing both the missing and existing cemetery.

(Note: In the space of 24 hours hours we have received two new articles about Rita Booth.  Those and any subsquent materials will be added under the cemetery story below):

An article in the Binghamton Herald Republican (which is too obscured for photos) during the week of Rita’s troupe arrival in Binghamton details the Binghamton City Alderman attempting to pass legislation to abandon the City Cemetery and turn it into residential lots.

The City Cemetery was not only in disrepair, but was also in the way of progess. There were other graveyards, and all were cheaper than City Cemetery. But only Glenwood was taking out expensive advertisements at the time.

Eldredge street, where the "Old City Cemetery" was located.

The last sentence in Superintendant HULBERT’s advertisement for Glenwood Cemetery (above) is conspicous: “All orders for removing bodies will be promptly and carefully performed.” This is not in keeping with the usual mention of what undertaker took charge of a fresh body. Although it is in the realm of conjecture, this sentence is probably inserted into the advertisement to encourage those with means to transfer loved ones from that decaying cemetery with a threatened future to Glenwood Cemetery. Two of the most famous and prosperous families in town had already done so in previous decades (Whitney and Dickinson). Items up for discussion in town council meetings were often publicized well in advance…sometimes by bulletin board…and so it is assured by the large article (not shown), that it was well known the Binghamton City Cemetery was in a period of crisis; was probably not even accepting more burials; was under threat of condemnation; and was a long known place of disrepair. This was just plain “in the news” as Ogarita Booth Henderson, her husband Al, and the rest of the Floy Crowell troupe were in town.

Rita’s husband, Al Henderson, must be assumed to be the one to make the funeral decisions. All the early notices bear his name — and so do the articles about them signing together for various gigs. He would have probably seen the notices of the show, in the 4 days it was supposed to be in town, and also the suddenly added 5th day with a matinee and evening show. Some of these would have been interesting to him as a person involved in the show and how it was advertised. The advertisement for Glenwood Cemetery was always only a few inches away from any mention of the Floy Crowell show. If he and a non-ill Rita looked at the adverts as they arrived in town, they would have had within their vision adverts for Glenwood Cemetery, never knowing they would soon need the services of such. And if they followed the papers, they would also have seen the roots of the eventual abandonment of the City Cemetery, argued not for the first, nor the last time in print, but squarely in their time in Binghamton.

Lengthy articles can be found in Binghamton papers for a seventeen-year period showing much angst and controversy over the attempts to close the Old City Cemetery. Finally, on July 16th 1906, the council got their measure passed, and relatives or friends were told to have descendant bodies removed by December 1st. The city allowed the less-than-generous sum of ten dollars in expenses to families wishing to do this privately. Remaining bodies or bones would be removed to Glenwood Cemetery.

The enclosed photograph of an article about City Engineer Giles, and his task of staking out residential lots at the site is from January 1st 1907 (Binghamton Press).

Eight days later, F. B Hulbert, the supervisor of Glenwood Cemetery, and the son of the previous supervisor began the morbid task of moving 1,330 bodies across five densely populated miles — right through the business district.

Hulbert’s hired laborers had to cut through four feet of penetrating frost before the digging got easier. The remains were placed in pine boxes, and then stacked “with geometric precision” on carts drawn by a team of drays.

A January 29th, 1950 Press article depicts an elderly Mr. Hulbert standing over a collapsed tombstone recounting the story. The contract Mr. Hulbert signed with the City Of Binghamton stated that he was to be paid $8.50 per body. He was to remove the remains from the Old City Cemetery; place them in a three foot pine box; transport them to Glenwood; rebury them; and place a new marker if an old one didn’t exist.

Mr. Hulbert found that the Old City Cemetery had been “poorly administrated” [sic], and would end up seeing his work described the same way for decades. Records, “were missing and confused. Bodies were buried so indiscriminately that it became necessary to excavate almost the entire cemetery,” the Press reported. Later, when contractors began to build on the site, more bodies were found.

“Because of the inept method by which records were kept, hundreds of bodies were never identified,” the 1950 Press recounting says, “Graves were opened and bodies were found missing. Tombstones were found over empty graves.”

A city inspector named George A. Lincoln was assigned to oversee the exodus to Glenwood Cemetery. He kept a diary of the goings-on. His March 6th entry is peculiar:
“Partial body of adult. Remains were wrapped in a carpet and only about 18 inches below the surface. Reported to coroner and by him ordered to be interred as usual.” Mr. Hulbert recalled the incident 43 years later, remembering that a monkey wrench and a hatchet were found with the cut up body. Still, the coroner wanted this graveyard secret put back under the ground, albeit 5 miles away.

Eight days later, Mr. Lincoln wrote: “Body of adult–not identified (A clay pipe and rusty razor had been buried with this body.)”

Mr. Hulbert tells the story of finding 66 bodies in a common pit. These were determined to have been pulled from the Potter’s Field portion of the Old Cemetery years earlier to make way for Liberty Street to be built. For nearly two decades the City had been publicly debating the abandonment of the Cemetery, and yet, they had been quietly doing it all along.

Mr Hulbert told the Press that the City refused to pay the agreed upon $8.50 per corpse for these cases. He was finally instructed to place these remains three to a box, at the $8.50 rate. For the completed job, Mr. Hulbert was paid about $12,000 dollars.

Mr. Hulbert received many complaints for the state of Glenwood Cemetery. As part of his contract for the City Cemetery removals he was required to “set out in the corners of the lots trees and shrubs of value not less than $100.” Mr. Hulbert says this was done, but some of these plants were killed in a dry summer, and others were strangled by weeds.

“We’ve taken it standing up for many years,” Mr. Hulbert said of the complaints, “we don’t want to shirk any responsibility, but since the bodies were reburied the City of Binghamton never has paid a penny for their upkeep. For the price we received we hardly could be expected to maintain the plot.”

Mr. Hulbert, and many of his family members, including his father, who is probably the man who placed Ogarita Booth Henderson in her grave, are all buried on a steep ravine in Glenwood Cemetery. Their plots are a stones throw from her grave. Random pieces of tombstones can be seen dotting the ravine, some of them working their way into a brook, washing away into a storm drain.

(NOTE: Above are two articles sent in generously by Author Ron Franscell, “The Dark Night.” Click on the thumbnail to view the larger version).

The stage where Rita did her last performances.

Editors Note: Over time, newly found items about Ogarita Booth Henderson will be whispered in the comments below, where several updates already exist.

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As home to a burgeoning population of urban explorers, France has always been ahead of its time. In fact, the government sanctioned and sent photographers across the country in the mid-19th century on the taxpayer’s dime. The photographers’ goal was to explore and photograph the crumbling architecture and infrastructure of the country.

In 1851, the Commission de Monuments Historiques embarked on an unprecedented survey of the French landscape. Five photographers traveled to the far reaches of France. Their targets would be the buildings that made up the heritage of France – the “architectural patrimony” of the country. It was to be known as a Mission Heliographique, and the photographers returned with plates and prints portraying buildings – many of which no longer exist. Sadly, upon return, their negatives remained largely unpublished for over a century.

An image of a church entry by Hippolyte Bayard

Edouard Baldus (1813-1889), Hippolyte Bayard (1801-1887), Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884), Henri Le Secq (1818-1882), and Auguste Mestral were chosen to photograph France’s built heritage (you can download a detailed analysis of Le Secq’s 1851 photos here – 3MB PDF). The Societe Heliographique – with the financial support of the French government – had chosen these photographers as the nation’s sole documentarians of their crumbling and ‘archaic’ architecture. Each photographer was told to visit a specific region of France. Baldus went to the south and east; Le Gray embarked on a journey to the Chateaux of the Loire Valley-Blois, as well as numerous small towns with Romanesque religious edifices; Le Gray and Mestral traveled to the yet-to-be-restored town of Carcassonne and other sites in south-central and central France; Le Secq was dispatched to the north and east side of France, where he found towering Gothic cathedrals; and Bayard (the only stalwart user of glass negatives) went to Brittany and Normandy to document the quaint architecture of Coastal France.

Photos of (from left to right) Gustave Le Gray, Hippolyte Bayard, Henri Le Secq, and Auguste Mestral

The five photographers returned in the Winter of 1851 with more than 300 photographs. There was much fanfare upon their return. But the photos were immediately retrieved and locked in a drawer. Bayard’s glass negatives are yet to be found.

The Mission Heliographique was the first state-sponsored, photographic survey of architecture. Yet the visionary parent society, the Societe Heliographique, only survived for less than three years, from 1851-1853. Even Le Gray, one of the five ‘esteemed’ photographers on the expedition – found himself in Syria and Egypt in 1860, on the run from tenacious creditors. Le Gray later died in Cairo, perhaps still incognito due to his debts.

The ruins of Karnak, by Gustave Le Gray, while he was exiled in Egypt.

The expedition’s failure as an artistic polemic to save architecture was perhaps – ironically – due to its success. According to Naomi Rosenblum, in “Documentation: Landscape and Architecture,” The photographers’ skill and artistry helped doom the project. The beautifully composed images of decaying buildings made them appear in a positive light, which did little to encourage the restoration work for which the Mission Heliographique had originally embarked. It was said that – soon after the Mission Heliographique – Paris lost 70% of its architecture due to the urban renewal efforts of Napoleon III under the architectural supervision of Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann.

A Church in France by Hippolyte Bayard.

Ironically, Napoleon saw the great potential of the new medium of photography and of the Mission Heliographique, in particular. Says Naomi Rosenblum, in A World History of Photography, “The [French] government continued to regard photography as a tool integral to its expansive domestic and foreign programs, commissioning documentations of the countryside, the railroad lines, and of natural disasters as evidence of its concern for national programs and problems.”

Napoleon III used photography to propagandize to the French population and monumentalize the new architecture he had created under his rulership. Within a decade of the Mission Heliographique, Charles Marville was hired by the City of Paris to document the Medieval passageways soon-to-be demolished by the wrecking ball of Haussman’s grand vision. One might assume that Marville incited a preservation consciousness through his photos of decaying architecture, but the fact was that Marville often purposely portrayed his subjects in a negative light – often using these photos to legitimize the Urban Renewal efforts of Baron Haussmann (and, by default, Louis Napoleon as well). One particular example is the photo below, in which Marville sprayed the streets with water prior to photographing the alleyway (in order to make the street appear infested with sewer).

A potrait of Charles Marville (left), and one of the famed works of Marville, which was intentionally "made-up" to appear as if the alleyway was infested and inundated with sewer.

One might say that the efforts of Baldus, Bayard, Le Gray, Le Secq, and Mestral were all to no avail. With their photos locked in a drawer, and a number of the buildings they photographed demolished under Napoleon III – some might see the Mission Heliographique as an exercise in futility – a project that did not carry through on its intended goal.

I’d like to see it in another light.

The days of the Commission de Monuments Historiques no longer exist. State-sponsored surveys of historic buildings are essentially a thing of the past. Though the United States instituted its own version as a result of the New Deal, known as the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) — the skimpy funding (HABS relies largely on summer interns these days) and the lack of a grand vision of documentation both ensure that HABS fails to encapsulate the artistic inspiration that the Mission Heliographique had.

In the end — ironically — what had once seemed to be an utter failure became an astounding success 100 years later. Gustave Le Gray had posthumously achieved the brass ring of photographic prowess: One of his photographs was among the list of top ten most expensive photographs sold in history when it was auctioned at the price of $838,000 in 1999.

Gustave Le Gray's "The Great Wave," recently sold for $830,000, and was listed as one of the top ten most expensive photographs of all time.

I’d like to think of modern urban explorers as the “illegitimate” Le Grays and Le Secq’s of our time. Many of us skirt the law to beat the wrecking ball. I’m sure many of us hope that, some day, our work will be valued and understood in the same way that these photographs are today.

Further Research about the Mission Heliographique

All About the Mission Heliographique

• http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/heli/hd_heli.htm
• http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3575/is_1263_211/ai_86390754/

Napoleon’s Use of Photography as Architectural Propoganda

• http://www.archdaily.com/15271/learning-from-the-slums-12literature-and-urban-renewal/
• http://livgudmundson.com/essay/essay-napoleon.html
• http://www.findingfrance.com/stories/baron_hauss.html

More about HABS/HAER

• http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/habs_haer/
• http://crmjournal.cr.nps.gov/04_article_sub.cfm?issue=Volume%201%20Number%201%20Fall%202003&page=6&seq=1

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2. A Look at the Cal Academy of Sciences of 1891-1906
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I find it difficult to write about places I have not seen or photographed – let alone places that disappeared over a century ago. But it’s the exercise of researching and viewing such places through the prism of the past that compels me continue my own efforts at double-speed. Without these scintillas of inspiration, I probably wouldn’t have the ambition to continue my documentation.

This entry probably represents the first location I’ve written about that I have not witnessed or photographed first-hand. In fact, you’d probably be hard-pressed to find a living soul on this Earth who has been inside of the second home of the California Academy of Sciences at 833 Market Street.

First, let me begin with a bit of a story. This story begins in the Summer of 2004, when I had just graduated and moved to a quaint little apartment on the corner of 48th and Irving, right across from the Golden Gate Park and steps away from the Pacific Ocean. I took to exploring the park on my bike, and eventually found myself, for the first time, on the grounds of the 1894 midwinter exposition of San Francisco. Back then the DeYoung Museum, as we know it now, looked like a shiny new, copper penny, and it was yet to be opened. Across from the DeYoung was a white building, slowly succumbing to the environment. It was the original aquarium for the California Academy of Sciences – and it was one among many solo experiences that led to my interest in building hacking.

The fine arts building of the Midwinter Exposition of 1894

I pondered what was inside of that building, which dated back to 1913 (I had managed to see when it was abandoned, long before the construction crews had moved in to begin on the new Cal Academy). I had a burning curiosity to see what sort of artificial landscape was built inside. I could only imagine the grand columns and wrought-iron banisters — all of it locked up inside of a decrepit institution, like many that closed after suffering through the Loma Prieta Earthquake.

What I didn’t realize was that I would soon find myself in that building, but only after it had become the new California Academy of Sciences, LEED certified, with 60,000 photovoltaic cells and a cornucopia of California flora literally growing on its roof. Inside of this new $500 million facility, I spent the day dodging hyper children and fingerprint-covered aquarium glass to find myself on the East end of the building, watching a short documentary about the history of the Academy.

Then, suddenly, it appeared. The photo wasn’t for more than a few seconds, but I couldn’t help but be enthralled by its potential, fully hoping that this foyer still existed, with all of its incredible accouterments and embellishments.

The Long-gone California Academy Mammoth, which was destroyed by the Great Quake of 1906

It’s not too often that one sees a truly enthralling building. In fact, in my lifetime (and believe me, I’ve explored HUNDREDS of buildings), I’ve probably only been truly in awe with three, possibly four — max. I would never have imagined being enthralled with a building via vicarious exploration of it through mere images. But the second home of the California Academy of Sciences was a true house of elegance.

The photo of the central atrium of the 1891-1906 Cal Academy of Sciences reminded me of another building I saw in Detroit, the Farwell building, which was originally encrusted in hand-cut pieces of colored glass from Louis Tiffany himself. The ceiling, eight stories above – through an open-air foyer – was a Tiffany chandelier, which disappeared one night after a building fire.

The central atrium of Detroit's Farwell Building, which seems to be fashioned in the same "Chicago-school" style as the 1891-1906 California Academy of Sciences Building.

Unfortunately, the Market Street California Academy of Sciences no longer exists — it was destroyed in the 1906 Earthquake. Academy curators and staffers reportedly ran to the building on Market street and rescued a single cart of materials, including Academy minute books, membership records, and 2,000 type specimens.

Everything else – 50 years of research and the brain trust of the newly minted state’s scientific heritage – had been destroyed. The massive Mammoth in the central atrium was consumed by fire – and only a single tusk was retrieved.

A photo of the building after the Great Quake of 1906.

What makes it all the more intriguing to me is the weight that such an anonymous photo could have in my mind. I began to think: It was once a beautiful, public space that probably filled the imaginations of numerous children in its brief life from 1893 to 1906. Today one isn’t privileged to see the Mammoth, or stand in the central skylit area to admire the repeating patterns of ornate railings and tall columns of marble.

A slightly awkward photo of a Cal Academy atendee standing in front of a Grizzly. Just look at those railings!

Call me a traditionalist, but just from my perception of one photo, taken by an anonymous person over 100 years ago – I can honestly say that I’d rather have the Academy of today look like that. But the truth is, the 1891 Academy – no matter how much I would like it to – no longer exists. And oddly enough, in the moments that I doubt what I do through my photography, or its true impact, I briefly think of this building.

The photos I’ve gathered of the 1891 California Academy of Sciences are the only ones I know that exist. They’re just snapshots from an anonymous photographer, but they’re of a world that exists in a different place now, one inaccessible to humans – replaced by modern high-rises and financial institutions. Years of architecture, and construction, hundreds of thousands of man-hours, hand-carved pillars, and hand-gathered specimens — all of them had become dust in the wind. But one thing remained: Those photos, the only visual record of what the interior once looked like.

Further Research

Reference Site for Cal Academy Docents: Complete History of the Academy
[Note: This file is a PowerPoint Presentation - You'll Need Microsoft Office]

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