====== Lamar Air Defense HF Radio Site ======

At Lamar, CO, immediately adjacent to an [[facilities/cable/lamar|L-3I main station]], there is a former US Air Force radio site. This site provided HF radio communications to Air Defense Command and various successor units at the [[facilities/military/cheyenne_mountain_complex|Cheyenne Mountain Complex]] until its retirement.

^ Built    | 1940s??? |
^ Builder    | US Army |
^ Fate     | County emergency operations facility |

{{wst>location|37.922263|-102.611224}}

===== Construction =====

While many have speculated this site to have been built alongside Cheyenne Mountain, military records show it to have been activated in March of 1956 as "Colorado Springs Comms Facility Annex." Based on a 1941 route map, AT&T already had a K-carrier long distance cable to Lamar at that time.

Formal DoD records on this site, such as real property cards, have proven elusive. The lack of clarity over the site's formal name is no doubt a factor.

===== History =====

Much of this information comes from a [[https://groups.io/g/coldwarcomms/topic/53537021|mailing list conversation]] and particularly a very helpful post by Tim Tyler.

> It was known as Operating Location Alpha Bravo, later just Operating  
> Location Alpha & administratively it was an annex of Peterson AFB, about 150  
> miles away.   It was a 24/7 operation with a crew of about 18 people  
> assigned, mostly radio ops, and then 5 or 6 radio maintenance troops.

> Circa 1998, there was still a faded sign up at the main gate which  on 
> which the original wording was:
> 
> US AIR FORCE   OL A B NORAD ADC TACTICAL RADIO STATION  47  COMMUNICATIONS GP
> 
> but then painted atop it in a later era was:
> 
> US AIR FORCE OL A  NORAD COMBAT OPERATIONS CENTER  HF  TACTICAL RADIO STATION   LAMAR COLORADO

Tim Tyler also quotes the 1985 book //Nuclear Battlefields// by William Arkin & Richard  
Fieldhouse:

> Lamar AFS:  NEACP/SAC airborne command post ground entry point.  Terminal 
> node of buried blast resistant coaxial cable providing communications  to 
> Cheyenne Mountain, 165 miles away, linked to AT&T hardened central office  and 
> and [sic] transcontinental hardened cable.

We know that the "terminal node of the blast resistant coaxial cable" part actually refers to the neighboring AT&T site, and the ground entry point probably does as well (AT&T operated the GEPs on contract). So, this quote is mostly useful to illustrate that there has been some historic confusion between these two adjacent facilities.

The site was clearly abandoned by the late 1990s, and went through a series of private owners before it was purchased by the county for use as an emergency operations training site.

===== Photos =====

{{gallery>facilities:military:lamar_hf}}

{{geotag>lat:37.922263 lon:-102.611224}}
{{tag>military}}