Eulogy for H-06 | Defender of the Hanford Reach

Proposed by Bell Laboratories in 1945, the Nike missile program was the first in the US to deliver an operational anti-aircraft solution to the emerging threat of jet-powered Soviet aircraft.

Site H-06, Saddle Mountain (easily located via Google Maps, if you’re wondering), is in the absolute fucking middle of nowhere, as far away from both Seattle and Spokane—the major east-west urban book ends in Washington State—as is possible. It almost seems as if Saddle Mountain could be a random butte in Saharan Africa or a lonely monolith in the Sonoran Desert. But it’s not. It’s just a slumbering, non-descript, scrub-steppe hill in the bowels of the Eastern Washington desert.

You would never, ever, find this place if you weren’t actively looking.

Washington State was home to three Nike missile defense areas back in the Cold War—Seattle, Fairchild, and Hanford—with each location having significant strategic national security value. Seattle had Boeing, Fort Lewis, and McChord Air Force base. Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane was an important cog in the Strategic Air Command system, and Hanford Nuclear Site was the site for the Manhattan Project and the US production of plutonium.

Similar to many other protected sites, Hanford was ensconced in a “Ring of Steel” (U.S. government term) that was the Nike missile defense system. Plopped on a high hill all by itself, adjacent only to sagebrush and crumbling basalt, H-06 was the northernmost battery of the four total that protected it.

Active from 1955 to 1960, H-06 was the only site in the Hanford Defense Area to be upgraded to the deadlier, second-generation Nike Hercules system that boasted nuclear warhead capabilities and a longer range than the original 25-mile Ajax. Despite its major upgrade in 1958, H-06 was taken out of service just two years later.

From the peak of almost 200 operational missile batteries in 1958, most Nike sites were decommissioned in a nine-year span beginning in 1965 and ending in 1974. The Soviet threat of ICBMs had made the original worry of their long-range bombers much less scary (and a huge cash sink for the Department of Defense). The Nike systems had to go.

The day I went out there, I drove three hours from Seattle to find access. When that access was washed out by the spring thaw, as they often are in the remote reaches of the Washington State Wastelands, I drove another hour to find more access.

Despite what Google Maps may tell you, there is a road all the way up to the site (now called “Saddle Mountain Lookout” on some sources). Though it would have been less sketchy with my ancient Toyota Land Cruiser, my highway-tired Subaru Outback had absolutely no problems traversing the backcountry desert roads.

As I crested the top of the hill, the first thing that struck me about the site was its utter desolation. We’re talking tumbleweeds-and-gunfights type desolation. Hills-have-eyes, the-mafia-definitely-dumps-bodies-here type desolation…

If I’m being honest, most Nike missile sites are fairly boring, and I’ve been to a few so far. H-06 was no different, just farther out.

Nikes weren’t the ICBMs, with their enormous, crumbling underground complexes that invite urban explorers, including divers (yes, you heard that right), from the world over. The only real underground part of Nike facilities were the missile batteries that came out of bunkers only big enough to hold their sub-50-foot launch frame. Nothing spectacular. And there certainly wasn’t any of that to explore.

At the top of the 1500-foot mesa, I could see forever. Sagebrush-covered hills with big blue skies, broken up by high, whispy, watercolor clouds. A clear, warm, early spring day in the Washington Wasteland was my reward for the hours of driving and reroutes. The dirt road hadn’t popped a tire, and there were multiple concrete slabs and pieces of rubble to explore.

A hawk circled above.

To the north, a far-off…gunshot?

Maybe not epic, but still fucking cool.

And cool still matters in my book.

A low cinder block wall surrounded what I can only guess had been a parking area a few hundred feet from the assumed living quarters. Below that, another hundred feet away, were two gigantic concrete slabs, their footprints the size of large barns. I stopped the Subaru in the suspected parking area, grabbed my tallboy of Modelo, and proceeded to explore.

To the east, 100 feet from the parking area, the mountain simply dropped off the edge in a spectacular desert cliff. From the top (nearly dropping my beer), I spied years of garbage and redneck Friday nights—dishwashers, cars, and other random objects had accumulated at the bottom.

Returning to my vehicle, I examined the three-foot retaining wall that surrounded the parking area. Typical cinder block wall construction, but nothing in the area gave any indication that it had been much more than a retaining wall that, if I’m honest, didn’t really need to be there.

Odd, to say the least.

A few hundred feet beyond the parking area and below the redneck dumping ground were the prizes: two large (30’ x 150’, maybe?) rectangular concrete pads, outlined by lightly colored, ground-level cinder blocks and their associated rubble. If the cinderblock rings were to be believed, the walls surrounding the assumed missile batteries were a cross between teal and sky blue.

At one point I found a decaying light fixture and associated electrical wiring, no doubt from the original buildings. At another point, I was blessed with an ancient, faded Mountain Dew can of the type only seen in my early-80s childhood. My memories flashed back to the remote Palouse country south of Spokane, where in school we still did nuclear bomb drills until we moved in 1986.

There was no shortage of history here; of that, I was sure.

The concrete pads were interesting, though not necessarily illuminating. I had assumed that they were the filled-in, underground missile batteries; however, I have also run across a reading which makes me doubt that these are far enough away. Most batteries were placed a minimum of 1000 feet away from their associated control facilities. I didn’t measure, but the pads seemed close.

Towards the end of my visit (and my victory beer), a lost-looking older couple in a Prius showed up. I crushed my can and began walking back toward my car. They were up near the redneck dumping ground. I didn’t talk to them, but they looked underwhelmed…like they had expected more.

I wondered briefly if they had only shown up for the “Saddle Mountain Lookout” and not the Nike control site. Certainly, had they known the significance of this place, it seemed to me, they would have been more enthusiastic.

Not everyone is like me, I guess.

RIP H-06, Defender of the Hanford Reach.