![]() This road is not named for the athletic shoe.ĬCSI serves 12 high schools stretching from Columbia and Dupo in the north to Chester and Sparta in the south. And those Hercules missiles? The bunkers held 18 they cost about $55,000 a piece. The base cost about $2.6 million to build, including $22,400 for the land, which was purchased from a local farmer. “So if you want to own a Nike missile launch site be here July 12.’’Ībout 100 soldiers of the Army’s 62 nd Artillery, 1 st Missile Battalion, operated the Hecker base, according to a Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) produced in 1994. “We know it is going to sell that day,’’ Keller says. on July 12 will also be at the Hecker Community Center. In the meantime, the gates to the site are kept locked, and there are security alarms - so looky loos, be warned. “The ones who are just looky loos are going to the social media accounts and commenting back and forth.’’ “From what I have found so far, most of the people who took the time to call do have a genuine interest in it,’’ he says. He’s hoping the open houses will limit the number of people who just want to poke around a former missile base. Prospective buyers should go to the Hecker Community Center, where shuttles will take them to the site. Keller has set up two open houses for people with “a genuine interest” in purchasing the property: from 10 a.m. Proceeds from the sale go to Career Center of Southern Illinois (CCSI), a cooperative vocational school which serves local school districts and has owned the site since the early 1970s. Plus, there’s that commanding view of the countryside. Massive elevators that lifted 40-foot Hercules missiles topside still work. Faded lettering on the walls point to emergency escape hatches - reminders of the dangerous business once conducted here. Weathered steel doors above ground lead to the bunkers, which are as damp and dark as most old basements but still intact and functional. He can point out the rusty remnants of launch pads still embedded in slabs of aging concrete, and he explains how the missiles were rolled on now-gone tracks. Keller is well-versed in the history of the place, which he believes was put on alert only once – during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.įive-ton Hercules missiles were stored in three underground bunkers. Louis bases were in Grafton (SL-90), Marine, Ill., (SL-10), and Pacific, Mo., (SL-60) with Scott Air Force Base (SL-20) serving as headquarters. and Canada and make it through all of the air defenses, they’d be smashed to smithereens by 5-ton nuclear-tipped Hercules missiles launched from hundreds of these rural Army outposts that were spread across the U.S. Should intruders cross the DEW Line (the Distant Early Warning radar system) that protected the U.S. ![]() They were the city’s last line of defense. Louis Air Defense System, a protective ring of firepower that operated for nearly a decade - from mid-1959 to early 1969. It was one of four “backyard” missile sites that formed the St. The missile station, officially dubbed SL-40, is near Hecker, a town of 500, though it has a Red Bud address: 5055 M Road. The Army assured neighbors of the missile sites that they would not be "hot targets." Keller emphasizes that the property, including several weathered cinderblock buildings, is being sold “As Is.’’ And we’ll see at the end of the day what it brings.’’ “I figure the best appraisal for a property like this is an auction. “You really can’t appraise something like this,’’ Keller says. ![]() So the actual sales price could, well, skyrocket. The minimum opening bid is $70,000, and Keller knows several potential buyers who are willing to meet that. ![]() Some neighboring landowners are interested in the land, military history buffs would like it to be a museum - and he’s heard from a few survivalists. Or, flooding the rooms for a scuba diving school. Among the novel ideas he’s heard for the Hecker site: turning the three underground bunkers, where missiles were once stored, into an underground pot farm to grow medical marijuana. Keller, who usually sells farms with soybean fields and corn silos, has some ideas for repurposing this former military installation now knee-high in grass and weeds and colorful wildflowers.įormer missile bases around the country have been converted into luxury homes or warehouse storage, he says. The old shop, pump house and generator buildings are still standing. ![]()
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