Abandoned Missile Control Site Serves as Reminder of Cold War

Long gone are the soldiers who kept guard at this former Army facility, searching the skies for Soviet planes that might soar in from the Pacific to bomb the city.

Their weather-battered guard shack off a gravelly road in the steep hills behind Encino now has rusted window frames and a hole in one wall.

But the radar tower still stands tall, overlooking the San Fernando Valley to the north and the central city to the southeast.

Some mountain bikers and occasional hikers who explore the Santa Monica Mountains know the history of the former Nike Missile Control Site, a military fortress-turned-park that they now use as a water stop.

Tucked inconspicuously amid encroaching dry vegetation, the seldom-visited park, which is inaccessible by car, subtly reminds a first-time visitor of America’s silent war.

Indeed, to younger bikers whose memories of the Cold War do not run as deep, the mention of Nike missiles most often evokes a sense of fashion, not history.

“You tell them to ride up to the Nike place and they say, ‘What? They make shoes up there?’ ” said Russ Decker, a 45-year-old Woodland Hills resident taking a break from a ride. “So, you tell them, ‘No, Nike missiles, remember?’ ”

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As allies, America and the Soviet Union were victors in World War II, but they become foes in the Cold War years that followed.

Through the military buildup that followed over the next few decades, Southern Californians, like Americans nationwide, lived with the lingering possibility of nuclear attack.

“We will bury you,” Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had threatened.

The U.S. Army established 16 Nike missile control sites around Los Angeles to protect the city from possible invasion by Soviet planes that could carry nuclear warheads.

One of the sites chosen was the mountaintop behind the Encino reservoir. At 1,950 feet above sea level, it is one of the highest points in the Santa Monica Mountains.

LA96C--as the military installation was named--offered soldiers a clear view of downtown Los Angeles 15 miles to the southeast. Only a few skyscrapers were there at the time.

To the north, the soldiers could see the skies over the sparsely populated San Fernando Valley.

If enemy planes had managed to avoid detection by the U.S. military up to that point, the aircraft could have been spotted and destroyed before they could reach the California coast.

The system’s radar could detect planes as far as 100 miles away.

If an attack had occurred, computers at the mountaintop missile control site would alert the launching site--LA96L--four miles away in the Sepulveda Basin, where up to 30 Nike missiles stood ready to intercept enemy aircraft.

Located in an area that remains wild even today, LA96C was fenced in to keep away the coyotes, mountain lions and deer that populate the hills.

The missile control system consisted of a series of computers housed in buildings, and radar instruments.

The site contained barracks, where the soldiers lived, a latrine, a generator and water tanks. Soldiers kept a garden with cactus and other plants to pass the time and as a sign of hope.

For security purposes, the soldiers were not allowed to know how the full missile defense system worked. They only knew their specific jobs.

As the Cold War progressed, technology advanced.

The United States switched from the Nike Ajax defense missile, which used conventional warheads, to the larger, nuclear warhead-carrying Nike-Hercules missile.

The Soviet Union developed airplanes that American radar could not detect. Then, the United States developed radar that could track the most modern Soviet planes.

Eventually, both super powers developed intercontinental ballistic missiles that could fly so fast and so high that the Nike missile defense system became obsolete.

LA96C, which had been activated in 1956, was abandoned in 1968.

For nearly three decades now, the military installation has sat abandoned up there behind Encino, weeds covering its history.

The radar tower can still be seen from miles around, said Decker, who has been riding in the mountains for nearly 20 years.

In 1995, the property was bought by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and named San Vicente Mountain Park. The conservancy was formed in 1979 to buy mountain land around Los Angeles for public parks and trails and for environmental conservation.

The park is about a mile up a dirt-road extension off Mulholland and Encino Hills drives. A gate prevents motor vehicles from entering.

The conservancy maintains the park moderately. A few picnic tables and park benches, new restrooms and two soft drink machines are among the amenities.

Military-style signs tell of the site’s history.

One reads: “LA96C has been partially restored to give you the feeling of the site as a heavily secured and harsh military outpost--even as it is reclaimed by nature.”