The Montana Safeguard Complex: A Taxpayer Fleecer
(PAR) site. Decommissioned in 1974.
In the middle of a field sixty miles north of Great Falls, MT of lies what is left of the Montana U.S Army Perimeter Acquisition Radar Site (PAR); one of many relics of the Cold War in this region of the state.
PAR sites were part of the United States’ Safeguard program in 1960s; a program developed out of the need to defend the U.S Air Force’s ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missiles) silos in the region from the Soviets.
The idea of such a program first came in the form of the Sentinel Project; the project was cancelled in 1968 and efforts were redirected to constructed the new Safeguard Program away from civilian populations. The massive project was scaled back to just two PAR sites: Stanley Mickelsen Complex (located near Grand Fork, ND) and the Montana Complex.
Construction of the Montana site began in 1968 with a total estimated cost of $64 million (or $386 million in 2018) and utilize 9,000 people on hand in construction in 1972 and 4,000 later in development. 8.5 million pounds of steel with concrete walls three to ten feet thick would protect the people and equipment inside.A series of rails and elevators were constructed inside to move equipment and material for construction and maintenance for the radar.
The project faced several setbacks that caused construction to stop twice; once due to snow, the other due to a labor walkout in 1970.
The Safeguard Program was scaled back even more with the additional agreements of the Anti-Ballistic missile Treaty in 1974, only allowing one PAR site. The Montana complex was only 10% complete by this time and further efforts were redirected to the North Dakota complex since it was further along. Thus abandoning the Montana site in the same year.
After the abandonment, locals tried to come up with plan to utilize the space however because the size was largely underground and in the middle of nowhere, the site was salvaged for anything of value, everything underground was filled in, and parking lots, roads, and trailer sites were torn up.
Today the property sits on private land thirty miles east of Ledger, MT along Ledger Rd.
What is left of the 600+ acre site.
Graffiti artists and vandals have called this place home since its abandonment and with no plans to demolish the structure (due to cost) chances are the structure will stand, proudly in the middle of nowhere, for generations to come.
FULL GALLERY: (Photographs taken on August 5th, 2018)
