Eastside Stories - Check out the previous article here
Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.
The last Cold War Defense article discussed one of eleven bases established to house and launch missiles on the eastside. Bases like the one that existed in Redmond were designed for defense against attacks from Soviet aircraft and warheads. These missiles were a part of the Nike Project which designed state-of-the art warheads to stop enemy aircraft, eliminate missiles, and lead us to victory. Although the Redmond base was abandoned and soon became a place for urban explorers, ghost stories, and nefarious activities another near-by base remains active today, in a way, continuing to aid in national safety. This base was known as S-03.
The S-03 base located nearly between Kenmore and Bothell at 130 228th SW Street is still active as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters of the Pacific Northwest. The unassuming group of one-story buildings masks a large underground complex, although it is hard to say what was built for the Nike Missile Defense System and what has been added since then. Missile launch systems have been removed from the surface, but the space occupied remains the same. S-03 had a control center as well where administrative work and missile guidance took place. This space did not continue to be used by the government though. The control and administrative center of the Kenmore/Bothell base is now Horizon View Park, located on 47th Avenue. All of the original buildings and structures have been removed so nothing of the original Nike control site remains.
Opening in 1956 and closing its doors in 1964, the base had a short lifespan which doesn’t quite line up with any one major political event making the reason for its short existence up for debate. Opening before Sputnik makes it unlikely, that this advance triggered the base’s creation. Sputnik is the Russian word for satellite and also, the common name given the first satellite ever, launched by the USSR in 1957. Sputnik caused panic and anxiety as Westerners feared that the USSR had surpassed them in technological advancement and some even believed that the satellite would allow for attacks or surveillance across the globe. Of course, neither of these scenarios ended up being true and the satellite only remained aloft for about three weeks.
The S-03 site had eight missile launchers located at the facility, where they existed on the surface is now used by FEMA, replaced by more relevant structures and equipment. There were eleven sites like this across the Puget Sound area, but eight bases were chosen not to be converted to the from Zeus style missiles to Hercules Nike Missiles which may explain the closing of the site. Quick development of superior missiles meant that technology was always changing but where there was money to develop there may not have been money to upgrade existing sites. Either way, the Seattle Area Defense system, designed to protect financial, industrial, and transportation centers of the American Northwest was built and done away with fairly quickly overall due to changes in the political climate.
Within a few years of their opening the USA and USSR were already aware that de-escalation was necessary if each county wanted to have an economy that wasn’t fully war-based. The S-03 Nike Missile Base shut down before official talks known as the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) were proposed by the United States in 1966, let alone begun in 1969. These talks were successful overtime, with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) being signed by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev in May 1972. By this time though, most of the Nike Missile Bases had already been decommissioned including S-03.
The Cold War was a time when people’s fears and anxieties got the best of them and often escalated situations like nuclear production without cause. The Seattle Area Defense System may have been a part of this or, its anti-ballistic missiles were said to be the only thing stopping an imminent attack. In the end the USA and the USSR both produced enough nuclear warheads to destroy the world many times over. Most of the sites, like the Kenmore/Bothell site at S-03, were short lived and constructed to last for less than a decade. At least S-03 found a new life as a center for FEMA, giving us a different kind of safety net, and perhaps one more useful in a place with the highest concentration of active volcanoes in the USA. The FEMA headquarters here is prepared to react to volcanoes, earthquakes, and other man-made or natural disasters which seem much more imminent than a Soviet attack on American soil ever was.
Resources
Eastside Heritage Center Archives
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/nike-nuclear-missile-site-s1314
http://warbirdsnews.com/warbird-articles/abandoned-nike-missile-bases-united-states.html
https://www.historylink.org/File/9711
http://choosewashingtonstate.com/research-resources/about-washington/brief-state-history/
http://ed-thelen.org/MMTravis.html
https://www.britannica.com/technology/Nike-missile
https://www.britannica.com/event/Anti-Ballistic-Missile-Treaty
