Groom Lake Site II and Site I

area51specialprojects.com...
I find it funny after all these years there never has been proof positive of Kelly Johnson's first choice for a base for Aquatone (U-2 project). Groom is referred to as site II, but Site I was never revealed.

I noticed Peter Merlin says it might be the Mud Lake near the TTR (there are two Mud Lakes in the area), but nothing definitive.

Mud Lakes
N37 36 31.7 W117 00 20.2 (probably not the site)
N37 52 15.8 W117 03 17.7 (perhaps the first choice site)

If you think about nearby population, Delamar Dry Lake (Texas Lake) has fewer people nearby. The real advantage to Groom Lake is it was in restricted airspace. Some accounts say that Tony LeVier had to violate the AEC airspace when checking out Groom Lake.

reply to post by gariac


With all the "actual" monie spent on the black budget, not including the "black" monies they receive, they probably have about 20 sites by now at least. The ones we know about are probably just mostly for show at this point.

why advertise, everything is underground and has been for a long time. makes you wonder what the satellite dead spots hide

Originally posted by Fisherr
why advertise, everything is underground and has been for a long time. makes you wonder what the satellite dead spots hide

Can you provide any evidence for that theory?

Because Gariac has laid out, several times, his arguments as to why there is not really anything significant underground. And since he has had "Boots on the ground" more than pretty much any other poster I've seen on here... I tend to believe him.

Can you give me some evidence that might change my mind?


BTW...First post ever on ATS!!!!

I rather not stray from the initial topic here. Basically why the big secret regarding sites examined but not picked?

Use this as analogy. Someone tells you they picked chocolate as their favorite flavor of ice cream. So you inquire as to what other flavors they tried. Then you get a reply "I evaluated 12 other flavors of ice cream, but the exact flavors I tested are a secret. I'll point out the Ice cream flavor codename "II" was close." This would be a WTF moment.

So Tony LeVier and Kelly Johnson took the alternate locations of the operation at Groom Lake to their graves? Or is it a matter of all these Groom Lake books simply playing echo chamber, just parroting each other?

I don't think anybody was being secretive about the site location choices.LeVier only said that he looked at sites all over the Southwest, and eventually picked Groom Lake because it was the best location. Kelly Johnson provided additional details in his personal log, but he often left out a lot of significant events (for example, he made no mention of his one and only flight in the A-12T).

In April 1955, Johnson wrote that he, LeVier, and and Ozzie Ritland "flew all over Nevada looking for base sites." He further noted that "G. Greenaway had come out in March and we had shown him our various sites off of the government reservation." The sole log entry for March 1955 made no reference to Greenaway's visit, but the April entry indicates that he thought "security was not sufficient at the best site." That was presumably Johnson's "Site One."

An entry at the end of April says, "Base location has been decided as Site II, for which they will accept my proposed name of Paradise Ranch."

In May 1955, Johnson complained about base construction costs. "Costs now up to $832,000...Site One came to $450,000 on same deal, but was not as good or secure. We had Site One base all designed ready to go."

I'm not sure why he never gave the name of the lakebed. Of course, he never names Groom Lake either, referring to it only as Site II (or later, in 1962, as Area 51). LeVier was likely not too involved in the construction aspects, and probably only remembered Site One as one of the myriad other choices that were rejected.

I favor Mud Lake near Tonopah as the most likely candidate for Site One. It is in a secluded location adjacent to the Nellis ranges and it is nearly round, providing pilots with the opportunity to takeoff and land in any direction with as much as five miles of useful runway. Unfortunately, from a security standpoint, aircraft operating from Mud Lake would be visible from the towns of Goldfield and Tonopah, as well as from several highways.

reply to post by Shadowhawk


You would think that Mud Lake, assuming the one to the east of the TTR, would be more expensive to build on than Groom Lake. Tonopah is close to , uh, well, nothing actually. You can't get there from here. Groom is a drive from Vegas for the construction materials and crew, but not that much of a drive. Of course, they could have construction trailers for the workers, but there is no getting around the logistics of shipping building materials. Concrete can only have so many turns in the truck..

I don't know what Tonopah was like in the 50s, but today, there isn't enough skilled labor in town to do construction. I need to dig up the name of the contractor that built the party shack at Base Camp. They weren't local. When I met the guys wiring up the power for the new repeater shacks above Warm Springs, they were out of Vegas. I was surprised to find the crew doing the tower work (dish installation) for AT&T were out of Arizona. [Vegas isn't exactly a town for technical work.]

The X-15 and the U-2 were programs running at about the same time. They scouted out dry lakes for the x-15, so are we to assume these site investigations were not shared? Thinking outside the box, maybe they wanted Site I as an emergency strip for the X-15, making Site II a better choice for the test facility. [Zero evidence for this theory.]

For those that don't know the story, TD Barnes was a radar operator at the NASA Beatty facility and saw the planes flying out of Groom. The concrete slabs for the Beatty radar site are still on the mountain.The buildings are long gone. I've never investigated the Ely radar site.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the TTR was bigger years ago that it's present day footprint.

Lockheed's lakebed survey was sort of clandestine since they were looking for a test site of the CIA's new spy plane. NASA, with Air Force assistance, conducted lakebed surveys for the X-15 program in 1958. Groom Lake was selected as one of the contingency landing sites for use following launch from Delamar Lake. NASA had to reject the idea of using Groom as a launch lake due to restrictions related to Project OXCART, but it was approved for emergency landings.

I have a collection of old maps I pulled off the U. of Nevada archives. The dates are embedded in the file names. It would probably pay to find the originals. But they do show the boundaries of the NTTR over the years.









The 1994 map is dubious since it shows you could go right to the edge of Groom Dry Lake. Now at one time that was true, but not in 1994. This is one of the reasons I never did much with these maps since that 1994 map made me distrustful of the rest.

It looks like at one time Cedar Pass road was a public road. The NTTR border went into Queen City Summit at one time IIRC. There are 50 cal bullet shells around there and occasionally the ranchers stumble upon old munitions east of the ET Highway.

In the edit, I added this map:

It looks like Nellis owned up to the 36th parallel, but only between 1940 and 1942. This brief period is when the munitions got on the other side of the ET highway.

I thought I read somewhere that the first site was named and it was a place in southern california. It was a long time ago and couldn't tell you where I read it. You guys have obviously read alot more than I have on the subject, just throwing it out there.