Found a military base in my old town

Don't really think there is anything special about this, but figured i'd share it with you fellas.

The town I grew up in is huge. It was an old farming town was was basicaly developed into a traffic-packed suburbia. Well, few years back as a teenager i'd heard rumors of an abandoned army base hidden smack in he middle of my town. There had recently been a park built in town that cleared out alot of land, and at the far end of the park past the baseball diamonds, you could find a 10' tall fence with a gate, leading into what looked like the remaining uncleared woods (well, not really woods... more like bigass bushes and junk).

Eventually me and the boys went to explore. We got through the fence and were out of the park. There was a water tower ahead so we followed to it. I immediately notice that we are walking on heavily grown-in concrete. Surrounding us were what looked like scattered 20' sections of railroad track. As we kept hiking on our way, we came up to another 10' fence. On this fence though there were wooden signs in the shape of a shield, painted red white and blue, baring the words "U.S. Property/No Tresspassing", or something of that nature (remember, this was about 10 years ago so I don't got every exact detail in my head).

Once we got through that fence, i was dumbfounded at what I saw. As we travelled down the 'street', we were surrounded by an absolutely massive miitary installation. later on in the trip, i managed to get on top of a warehouse to survey the area. the whole place must have been at least 1/2 mile deep by 1/2 mile wide surrounded by some of the last remaining woods in town. You could not see out of the place, and I realized why, after living there my whole life, I never knew of the place either. Of the building I could recognize, there was a two-story hospital building, a baracks, and maybe 50 or so warehouses and 'factories'.

Interesting things I noticed while there, the train tracks i'd passed along the way in did lead to the place. There was a sort of railroad terminal, and it seems that the 20' track sections that were spread out on the concrete plain, would connect to create a track into the base.

Inbetween the rows of buildings on the asphalt and concrete 'street', there were orange freshly-spray painted markings. The marking brough to mind another rumor i had heard growing up. That after the Gulf War, trains carrying military vehicles and armament were seen travelling through my town. The marking consisted of a number of squares and arrows. It seemed like they were 'placeholders' and indicated a path a vehicle operater was supposed to follow. Certain arrows would be curved and a number of degrees painted on the ground, leading to the next 'box'.

In the warehouses, there were conveyor belts and giant packing-peanut dispensers. Searching the barracks, i was lead to believe the place had been abandoned in the 1960's or 70's, so this didnt seem too out of place. However, in the 'factories' there were absolutely huge piles of ancient radio-type equipmet... i'm not sure what all the fancy insutruments were for, but it was a boatload of what appeared to be 50's-era military electronics. all just swept up in a huge pile.

Actually, I did manage to snag a gas mask and have it right here with me to this day. It has two 'chemical cartriges', labelled (interestingly), "ACID GASSES AND FORMALDEHYDE VAPOR/MSHA/issued to MINE SAFETY APPLIANCES CO., PITTSBURGH, PA".

The most interesting find though, was right along the outside permiter of the base. Three tiny, ancient-looking houses. Each was sinking into the ground pretty good, and had tombstones in their front yards. Those lil' suckers were spooky.

Ater trying to dig up info on the site, I haven't been able to learn much. The place was 'abandoned' some time in the 60's or 70's, and it's last role was a GSA depot from what I can tell. I'd heard from someone I know that he was told by an elder family member of that the place was originally constructed in the 1940's as a POW camp. I've heard stories of this before, however I canot verify this.

I do believe I found one bit of info on it though, from an unexpected source. Turs out, the place is an EPA superfund site, and houses the nation's largest stockpile of mercury. I cannot verify this either, however, as there are two GSA depots in that town. One is right on the highway and is pretty publicly known of (they have a ball park in it...). I canot reember if the info I got about the superfund site referred to this place, or the 'hidden' one.

I compiled a full high reslution picture of the base from images i got off teraserver. If I can ever find what I did with it i'll share.

Very interesting vinrock! Thank you very much for sharing. I hope you find the picture, as I'm sure many of us would love to see it. Have you thought about going back to check it out again, or have you been back since ?

Good post!

Post some location information and we'll see what turns up. Just based on what was in your story I came up with this, but it was not abandoned in 2001:

Somerville Depot

Definitely hunt up the pictures.

al list of DLA Depots

Cool, that's the one. After reading that info page on it, makes ya think the place is still lit up and active. It looks absolutely abandoned and falling apart. I do know of one incident of vandalism there where one warehouse was burned down, only to have aother immediately reconstructed in it's place, but never housed anything.


I found the satelite image mosaic i put together of the place, just gotta find somewhere to upload it to.

I'm happy to help. There are websites that allow you to host photos and link directly to them. A couple are:
www.imageshack.com...
photobucket.com...

When you are getting ready to post pics, please keep our dial-up users in mind by keeping the images reasonably sized.