Old Nike Base Albany Ga Gone?

I have an uncle 7 years older than me, and we used to go out to this Nike base where they had missles at one time but when I went there as a kid in the early 70's there were big metal plates in the ground bolted to the cement where the silos were. The place looked like a parking lot in the middle of knowhere. the coolest thing was there were small, one room bunkers off to the sides of the streets next to the silos and they didn't have doors. If ya went there, there was a big old house in the distance on a hill, with no trees blocking the view. Big guy dressed in farmer John clothes would call the cops on ya, yell at ya, and chase ya down if he could. Mean guy. My uncle went there by himself once when he was 15, and he had his 22 hunting rifle strapped on his sholder like normal. this guy called the cops or whoever, had him arrested and he got a felony for it. My uncles dream was to join the ARMY when he turn 16, but because of that he couldn't, instead he went into the Airforce. He retired a couple years ago.
Last time I went there was in 89 and it was nearly same as it was before except the concrete had weeds growing out of it everywhere. Now I look at it on google earth and you can't even see it. but I know where it was cause I had to walk there ya know, lived there long time on Holly Hill Road with grandma.

I can give the coordinates but I can't draw you a picture.
Lat 31°37'22.64"N
Long 84°16'40.65"W
I can walk ya there, from Old Dawson Rd you turn on Home drive, go past Holly Hill, then hang a left on Edith Drive, go down a couple houses and cut through their yard hehe, you come to a dirt rd, from there you keep going north a few hundred yards and your there. you might see the triangle lake over to the right, the base was in this area and to the N W of it 100 yards, looks like there is a subdivision there now. Just thought it weird and wanted to see if anyone knew about it.

hmm, did some research but can't find much on this place, it was a hard find without much gain. still would like to know if there is more info on this site.

ed-thelen.org...

It's east of Winifred road and it's called from what I can gather TU-79

L - 10 NW Albany, S of US 82, E of Winnifred Rd ((O) housing development?)
[[Murdock, S] GPS=31-37-51, 84-16-34, TerraServer]

I'm an old Nike Herc operator myself. I can vouch for how fast and effectively an old Nike site can be removed. For example, in 1981-1982 I was stationed at B 3/71 ADA in West Germany. A few years ago I tried looking up the old unit. I knew that it had been disbanded a few years after I left but what I found on a website proved interesting. The site was almost literally gone. Just a few concrete slabs in a cow pasture. No Barracks, no admin area, I don't know if the Berms are there or not. The Bunkers with no doors that you describe sound awfully familiar but I must admit that I worked on the other end of the missile system. I worked with the Radars and the computer for it. Sounds like you are describing what we called "Down range" That was where the missiles were stored.

Something you might want to look for are a series of straight raised hills roughly 15 to 20 feet high. Chances are those are the protective berms that went around Down range. Also look a little bit of a distance off for any unusual shaped hills. Probably where the radars and IFC (Integrated Fire Control) (Where I worked) were located.

Best of luck in your hunt!

reply to post by 4x4fun


I lived in albany in 77 and 78. We rode motorcycles to this place called the Nike Base and the coolest part of going there was riding up and down the mounds that surrounded the launch sites. There were still buildings there then and we would do doughnuts inside them. Good times...

Those would be the berms that I mentioned earlier. Do you remember if they were straight or in a circular pattern? Right off the bat I suspect that they might still be there. If they were in a circular pattern then they were probably a part of the IFC (Integrated Fire Control) system. That's the area of a Nike Herc base that I worked on.

I lived in Albany for 24 years and I grew up on Holly Hill Rd. We used to ride out there to and I can personally vouch for the grumpy farmer. This is an interesting place. It seemed fairly large from what I understand of this type of base. It did look similar to the other missile on the web though.

We used to drive our trucks up on those banks(three or four of them in a line). On top there where shafts that went into them. Inside there was a little 6x6 or so concrete room and there was door like you might find on a submarine in the floor welded shut. Does anyone know what was in those?

Another weird thing was a small asphalt path off from the banks that looked like it accommodated a treaded vehicle in that it had two parallel paths but more narrow than a car.

I distinctly remember one day while nosing around, the distinct sound of the hum of an electrical transformer. Would these decommissioned sites require power for anything? There was still power lines running to the place last time I was out there.

I would imagine that the old Air Force base and Marine base is why this site was there. The Marine base is the East coast logistics base and as I understand it the Air Force base had the largest runway in the country and could land the biggest planes. The Nike base, from what I understand has been completely bull-dozed. It seems civilization is finally intruding and I think they intend to build on top of it.

I just posted in anon... I found this article. This surprised me a little. www.turnerfield-miller.com... According to this these missiles may have very well been nukes (2 and 10kT). I wonder if this is the "Sasser location" it mentioned? Sasser isn't that far from the site.

The Legend of the Albany Nike Base

It is fascinating to find this post. I have been working on a book for several years now and the Nike Base in Albany, Georgia pops up in several chapters. Reason is that I grew up in Albany and at the age of thirteen my family moved out to the North Doublegate subdivision around 1983. And the Nike Base is a legendary place that serves up many fascinating stories into the lexicon of '70s and '80s youth culture in and around Albany, Georgia.

North Doublegate was located on the Lee County side of Old Dawson Road and east of Highway 82. The Nike Base was very expansive and many people do not realize that the part of the base with the bunkers, garage buildings, checkpoint and roads was only part of the base. The front portion of the base sits east of the old site just a couple of blocks south of Highway 82 and the Doublegate EZ Mart convenience store.

Ironically, a Christian-based drug and alcohol treatment center known as "The Anchorage" was built utilizing the personnel and living quarters section of the old Nike Base. In other words, the dorms, kitchen and mess hall area of the old base was converted into this treatment center. And I call this ironic because the Nike Base was the scene of major drug and alcohol use as well as Satanic worship. But I'll get into the details of this a bit later. I am not certain if The Anchorage is still open now days because I have not been back home in a few years. But there's a large tower at the front gate of the treatment center that used to be either an air traffic control tower or radar tower during the 1950s when the Nike Base was still operational.

I actually know tons of information about the base and would love to share it here as briefly as possible. For example, there were two different grumpy old men the average teenager would sometimes encounter during an excursion to the missile base. There was the old black farmer who lived in the house just a few hundred yards south of the base in the middle of the corn fields. He had a son that was a senior when I attended Lee County Highschool in 1984. But the Nike Base was actually on land purchased by K.G. Hodges. The farmer just rented that property and served as a groundskeeper and security guard of sorts for Hodges. Hence why he went nuts when he saw kids out there. He actually fired a shotgun in the air over my head once when I was riding my motorcycle out there. Rumor was that he had a 12-gauge with rock salt and that he'd actually shot a few trespassers over the years.

The land owner, K.G. Hodges, was very wealthy and used the land around the base mostly for organized quail hunts and rented the place to deer hunting clubs in the winter. And he absolutely hated kids trespassing on his land. At the time I loathed Hodges and thought he was a tyrant. I actually had more than a few run-ins with the man. Once face-to-face when he pulled his truck out in front of my motorcycle and caused me to wreck. I deeply loathed the man to put it nicely. But now that I am almost 40-years-old and own property myself. Thus I can better reason with Hodges' anger. Honestly, kids were going out there and doing all sorts of wild stuff. Including myself. Graffiti, sex in the back seats of cars and the growth of marijuana plants all over the surrounding property were but a few of the surprisingly tamer activities.

Continued in next post ...

[edit on 5-10-2008 by jasunami]

I live in Albany, moved here when I was 5, and have lived here ever since.

And, The Anchorage is still up and running.

Legend of the Nike Base Continued

The Nike Base has much darker legends around it. And I swear to you the stuff I'll reveal now is absolutely true. The sheriff of Lee County during the '70s and '80s was E.J. Boyer. I was close friends with his grandson at the time. One of the senior deputies during this era was a man named Thad Knight. He was actually a very good cop. An old fashioned Andy Griffith type of southern lawman. He was always fair to me and let me off the hook after a few lengthy morality speeches on several occasions. But this was also due to the fact that he knew my deceased father and I think he might have felt a bad for a troubled teen growing up without a dad.

The stories I am about to tell you are true. Because these two cops confirmed all of it. And I witnessed things as well.

When I was a teen me and a small group of friends rode motorcycles on the fire breaks throughout the land around the Nike Base site. For those who do not know, fire breaks are little dirt roads on a grid system used for controlled burning of undergrowth during the fall and spring seasons. The Nike Base location was heavily gridded with these narrow roads. A main road went from the south side of the forest to the north side of the forest and dumped out basically right into K.G. Hodges front yard. This is the road all the teenagers took out to the old base. The road entrance started where Danbury Lane ended at the time.

There were also roads that ran east to west on the grid. One at the south just a few hundred yards north of Danbury Lane, one in the center of the forest that you actually had to take a left onto in order to find the entrance to the base and the old checkpoint. If you went east on this center road you'd come out at the rear of The Anchorage treatment center. There was another east/west road further north that when taken east would dump you out into a massive pecan orchard owned by the Toolee Company. And when taken west the road would dump you out onto a rural dirt road where K.G. Hodges and several other older plantation homes where located. Taken all the way east would place you onto Highway 82.

I knew those dirt roads and the forest by the back of my hand. I literally spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours out in those woods mostly by myself on my motorcycle. I'd say from the age of 13 until I was 18, I road my motorcycle out into the roads on a daily basis. Sometimes for just a half hour or so and other times until the sun went down at night. I had a headlight on my motorcycle and used to enjoy night riding as well sometimes.

I have great insight into this place because my sister is 10 years older than me and she and her friends went out to the base a decade before myself. Not to mention that my father was a pilot and my grandfather was retired Navy. Plus four uncles all in the service as well. I recall going to Turner Field (which is now Miller Brewery) and watching air shows with my father and grandfather in the early '70s. I remember asking my grandfather about the Nike Base when I first discovered it and he told me they had live nukes out there in the 1950s during the height of the cold war.

Well, let me break down the crazy legends about that place and source of why K.G. Hodges and the black farmer were so hateful.

First off, there was an organized group of Satanists that frequented the Nike Base late at night. Mostly on Saturdays. And this is a fact. Many people dispelled these stories as folk tales but I know for a fact they were true. Because not only was I told by the police to stay away from the base because of these Satanists, of course I didn't listen and went on on teenage spy missions and actually saw these freaks several times. Not to mention that I found numerous sacrificed animal carcasses over the years. Once I was horrified to find a dog nailed to a tree. The Satanists were led by a local weirdo known as Crazy Ed. He's now in prison for robbery

[edit on 5-10-2008 by jasunami]

reply to post by jasunami


There were rumors about all sorts of those types of activities in that area for years. Some of them still pop up from time to time around here.

Here's a little more info if anyone wants it...

Turner Field

[edit on 10/5/2008 by skeptic1]

The Legend of the Nike Base Continued

Crazy Ed used to live with his parents on Ledo Road just a few miles from the base location. This was back when all that was on Ledo Road was the Addison Steel factory and a few scattered houses amongst farm land. Ed was a failed musician who was in his late 30s during the early 1980s and still living with his elderly parents. Crazy Ed used to prey on kids for sex and convince immature teens into following him as some sort of High Priest of Satanism. He modeled himself after Anton LaVey (author of the Satanic Bible) and walked around with a cheap Dracula cape he bought from a costume store. He even had some sort of old Spanish sword from an Army/Navy surplus store and a shaved head and goatee. But even at 13 years of age I knew the guy was an idiot and pedophile.

Regardless, Crazy Ed did have a healthy number of followers. His parents had a large yard. I think it was a few acres as I recall. But in the very back of their property in a small orchard of pecan trees, Ed built a pyramid out of lumber that sat atop a concrete slab where he'd sacrifice animals and it was also a place where he'd hang out with teens and do drugs. He sold drugs and bought teens beer and liquor as well. Just a typical predator type personality. I actually stumbled out to Ed's backyard on Halloween of all times in 1984 with a few friends that heard he was throwing a party. We went out there and the guy was an absolute moron. But as many morons often do, he had even dumber people that followed him. It was somewhat amazing really. Just imagine a devil worshipping, drug addicted pedophile living in Albany, Georgia and getting away with it. For those who do not know, Albany is a Mecca for Southern Baptists and a very religious place.

Well, Ed would hold so-called "Sabbath" nights at the Nike Base on Saturday nights. He and his followers would build bonfires and do all sorts of weird stuff. Again, I know because I spied on them. And in confession, me and a couple of my friends actually sniped a few of these people one night with pellet guns. Nothing fatal, we simply took pot shots at drunk devil worshippers from the trees about 50 yards away.

Eventually, the Nike Base became a hotspot and the cops started busting Ed and his gang of freaks. By 1985 or so, the Sabbath celebrations stopped. But by this same period, teens started going out to the base at night on dares and so forth. Guys would take their girlfriends out there to scare them and then turn to making out in the back seat of the car. In all honesty me and my friends took advantage of this as well. For about a year or more we'd ride our motorcycles out into the forest and park them. Then we'd put on rubber horror masks and have machetes and run up to parked cars and scare the living crap out of people. It was fun and dangerous in retrospect. But hey, I was 15 years old at the time.

Crazy Ed eventually got busted for having sex with a 14-year-old girl and did a year in jail I believe. Then a year after he was out of jail he robbed the Super X Drug Store on south Slappey Blvd. The idiot went into the store and held the pharmacist at gunpoint making the guy fill a trash bag full of drugs. When the cops arrived 10 minutes later they started the investigation. Almost an hour later a detective was walking down the front of the building and began to see pills and containers dropped on the sidewalk. He followed a trail of pills until he found an over-dosed Crazy Ed unconscious behind a large trash dumpster. He was saved by paramedics and then sent off to prison for armed robbery.

continued next post ...

[edit on 5-10-2008 by jasunami]

The Legend of the Nike Base Continued

Beyond Crazy Ed and Satanism at the Nike Base, there are many other stories. For example, there were American Indian burial mounds to the north of the base location and also a civil war era slave graveyard to the east close to the Anchorage. I think I was one of the first people to find the Indian mounds. Here's what is totally shocking now days. The Nike Base is absolutely gone. An entire subdivision of giant homes have been built on top of all the land that used to be dense forest with a corn field and Nike Base in the center. All of this is completely gone now. What's shocking is just like the movie "Poltergeist," greedy land developers built an entire subdivision on top of Indian burial mounds and slave graves. Not to mention all the Satanic stuff that was done out there. All I have to say is that I would not want to own one of those cursed houses for a number of reasons. Not to mention potential radiation. Who knows? I just wouldn't want to live on that land.

Other interesting stories of the old Nike Base and the forest that used to surround it, was that there were tons of marijuana plants grown out there during the '70s and '80s. I once got chased by pot growers when I accidentally rode up on them as they were checking their plants. But I was a professional at getting chased and getting away.

Me and my friends made a hobby out of getting chased by K.G. Hodges and the Lee County Sheriff's Department for years. For those who are not familiar with south Georgia terrain, it is all red clay soil. What this means is that on a typical summer's day, dirt roads turn into the producers of dust probably only second to the planet Mars. Basically for fun, my friends and I would go out to the base and ride our dirt bikes on the hills atop the bunkers and we'd even sometimes harass the farmer by running down some of his corn plants. Eventually a sheriff's deputy would show up on the narrow dirt roads. If it was Thad (the senior deputy) we'd just get away because he was a nice man. But more often it was young, rooky deputies. We'd ride up close to them, shoot a birdie finger and they'd give chase. So much dust was stirred up that they always either stopped the chase because of blindness or either they'd wreck. I know on three occasions deputies wrecked into pine trees on the side of the road.

Of course I cannot believe the stuff I did when I was a kid, but I did it and it was fun at the time. I'd never do something like that now. It's a bit shocking to think about the risks my friends and I took back then.

I was back home and drove in the direction of where the Nike Base used to be located. It was a sad event for me. All of that beautiful forest is gone now and nothing but big golf course type houses exist. Again, I am writing a book that mentions the Nike Base many times. So, at least I have the memories.

I will also remind people that as someone mentioned earlier there was a smaller Nike installment in Sasser, Georgia. But Sasser is only about 10 miles north or so from the Lee County location that now no longer exists. Also, there was another Nike Base way out in east Albany heading towards Sylvester, Georgia that was completely intact as recently as the 1990s. I cannot remember the name but a junkyard owned the property and basically this old base was surrounded by thousands of junk cars. Not to mention that there are still several accessible places around the Miller Brewery that have remnants of the old Air Force base that was there. Just so everyone knows, Mayor James H. Gray at the time the base closed made one of the biggest blunders in the history of Albany when he declined to convert Turner Field into a regional airport. For example, 747 and 757 and larger planes cannot land at Albany's current dinky airport. But they could have landed at Turner Field. But Albany has a history of dumb decisions such as declining to allow Interstate 75 to come through town.

[edit on 5-10-2008 by jasunami]

If anyone needs any further information I can probably help. Somewhere on my harddrive I have a collection of redacted government Air Force papers from Turner Field where pilots and air traffic controllers claimed to encounter U.F.O.s. In the Turner Field area and the Nike Base in Northwest Lee County, there was around 14 U.F.O. documentations by the Air Force from the 1950s up until the early 1970s. Now, I am a skeptic on such topics but it is fascinating to think that little old Albany was a haven at one time for U.F.O.s. And strangely the reports were mostly by pilots. Local residents have no clue but it was sort of a Roswell of the south in some ways. But typically U.F.O. sightings always come around Air Force bases for obvious reasons. Weather balloons, secret aricraft, etc. But again, the reports I found were all placed by actual Air Force personnel.

4X4Fun get in touch. We have to know each other. I lived not even a mile from the Nike Base from 1983 until 1995. And we are the same exact age.

[edit on 5-10-2008 by jasunami]

Also ... many of you may have seen this before but here's an informative web page about the Nike Bases in Georgia.

members.tripod.com...

Also mentioned in the following "Weird Georgia" book:

books.google.com... &hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

And this is a widely distributed UFO story regarding Albany, GA.:

www.ufocasebook.com...

reply to post by jasunami

sure wish I knew if I knew you. I, too, grew up riding motorcycles daily at the Nike base and on the dirt roads on the other side of Winifred. I hung out with guys, but gave in to adventures like you described. I was present when a girl lost total control of herself at the nike base claiming to have seen a small black boy coming toward our jeep that when we were going forward was illuminated, but when we stopped he would come toward us. I also know Ed.

They may have sold it off as well. They do sell decommisioned bases from time to time. Heck you can buy old missile silos etc.

Originally posted by hexLuthor
I just posted in anon... I found this article. This surprised me a little. www.turnerfield-miller.com... According to this these missiles may have very well been nukes (2 and 10kT). I wonder if this is the "Sasser location" it mentioned? Sasser isn't that far from the site.

It wouldn't surprise me about them having had nuke warheads. When I was stationed at the B 3/71 ADA in West Germany I noticed something. Officially we didn't have any Nuke warheads. Just the high explosive ones. Although they were nasty in their own right. You'll note the usage of the word "officially". We knew better. One obvious thing was watching some people move around a warhead or two downrange (where the missiles were). Couple of MPs would provide escort as it was moved. However when a different warhead was moved there would suddenly be a ring of about 10 - 14 MP's with M16s surround the warhead when it was moved. So yeah, It wouldn't surprise me at all.

Edited to add:
There seems to be a problem with your link.



[edit on 13-10-2008 by Deson]

I live by an old Nike Base in Northern California. A few years ago someone started pumping out the water that was on the lower levels, and big white unmarked simi trucks have been going out there as well. Also there are garuds that patrol the property. I wish I knew what was going on down there.


I know, be careful what you wish for.


[edit on 16-10-2008 by hoppy]