history
Nike Base – Missiles in Wilmington, OH?
Most of you know that my wife, Rachel, is from Wilmington, OH.
When we were dating, we drove by what looked like an old military base from the 1950s near Cowan lake. When I asked Rachel about it, she told me it was called the ‘Nike base‘ (off of SR 730 south of Wilmington), and that it was a missile base at one time and that there was still a no-fly zone around it! It looked like something from the X-Files, but I had never looked for info on it.
I drove by the ‘old base’ again tonight and had to learn more about it.
So tonight I finally got online and read some info from a guy on a site called “Illicit Ohio” who supposedly went on site and took photos (see link below). He got photos of some cool military history from the place!
I have nearly the same post on Facebook about this. I sent an e-mail to the History Channel to see if they might be willing to take on a story about the base, and from what I read tonight, apparently the entire program that the Nike bases were part of.
In the link below shows photos, and one shows a 60s picture of a missile on a trailer that looks a lot like the one on static display at the National Museum of the Unites States Air Force in Dayton (still one of the best museums anywhere!). If the History Channel can’t help, I’ll see if the museum can. So many of the old buildings are still there, it would not be hard to make it a historic place of interest or even a museum. I’ll work on that…
I used to wonder why it was that Wilmington, Ohio had a Doppler radar unit when it seemed that this was such a farm community. It might just be that we have that now for weather purposes because of the base’s role back then? Hmmm. I need to talk to my neighbor. He was on a bomber in WWII, and he used to live out there…
- Thanks to all the great comments below!
- I’m still trying to track down the owner and see what we might be able to show, see, or maybe one day become a museum!