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UER Forum > US: Pacific Southwest > San Jose icon un-abandoned (Viewed 1117 times)
basegrinder 


Total Likes: 76 likes




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San Jose icon un-abandoned
< on 3/26/2022 5:57 AM >
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Spending money on the important things... Mount Umunhum's forsaken radio tower has been dressed up. I can't find any photos of anyone ever having been inside.


https://www.mercur...-a-sleek-new-look/




sunlight 


Location: Bay Area
Total Likes: 31 likes




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Re: San Jose icon un-abandoned
< Reply # 1 on 3/26/2022 8:58 AM >
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Wow, I remember the site was closed off for lead waste. Since they've removed it, and the asbestos too, might be a cool explore if you can somehow get inside.

Also, an explorer named Tunnelbug made it in a long time ago. Photos are somewhere on his Flickr, I remember seeing them. Pretty sure he's got an account on UER too, so there might be an archived post.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tunnelbug/




RescueMe1060 


Location: San Francisco
Gender: Male
Total Likes: 1644 likes


Radioactivity, its in the air for you & me

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Re: San Jose icon un-abandoned
< Reply # 2 on 3/26/2022 9:28 PM >
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can someone copy and paste the article text here, we can't read it without making an account on the news agencies website




http://www.flickr....rescueme1060/sets/
RescueMe1060 


Location: San Francisco
Gender: Male
Total Likes: 1644 likes


Radioactivity, its in the air for you & me

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Re: San Jose icon un-abandoned
< Reply # 3 on 3/26/2022 9:37 PM >
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full members will enjoy this DB entry of the property

https://www.uer.ca...ow.asp?locid=23384

I made a thread on this listing about 10 years ago with the link to one of the most entertaining stories of exploration that involved many of the PSW members from waaaay back, that link is worth the late night read...




http://www.flickr....rescueme1060/sets/
basegrinder 


Total Likes: 76 likes




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Re: San Jose icon un-abandoned
< Reply # 4 on 3/27/2022 7:42 PM >
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Ah Tunnelbug. He says he created the noose in the stockade at Ord. (not saying i don't believe him)

I used to talk to him on flickr, but it's been a while.

Anyway sorry the link didn't work. Someone sent it to me and I was able to open it.

Sorry I missed that trip. I've been here a while but didn't see it if it was planned out in the 'open.' But are we talking the tower, or just the trashed buildings around it?

But I'll share this. Not many have been in here. After hearing reports on the 2nd (tower) city hall, I didn't want to go in. But in that same area there is a way to get to the old high school which was left as is half underground


https://www.flickr...basegrinder/HK22W9



[last edit 3/27/2022 7:45 PM by basegrinder - edited 1 times]

basegrinder 


Total Likes: 76 likes




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Re: San Jose icon un-abandoned
< Reply # 5 on 3/27/2022 7:49 PM >
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Posted on Forum: UER Forum
Bay Area landmark gets major upgrade — and a sleek new look
Paul Rogers
6-8 minutes

In one of the Bay Area’s more unusual makeovers, a $2 million renovation project at the Mount Umunhum radar tower, an 85-foot-tall landmark in the hills south of San Jose, is complete.

The five-story mountaintop building – visible from across the South Bay for its distinctive cube shape on the ridgeline – was once the centerpiece of Almaden Air Force Station, a military base that scanned the skies for Russian bombers from 1958 until it closed in 1980.

A popular destination with hikers now, the structure sits in the middle of the 19,300-acre Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve.

Its owner, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, a government agency based in Los Altos, planned to demolish the radar tower a decade ago as part of opening the summit of the once off-limits peak to the public.

But after Air Force veterans and historic preservationists protested and led efforts to have the structure listed on the county’s historic buildings registry in 2016, the district backed off and in 2019 agreed to seal it, restore it and renovate it.

This past week, that work was finished.

“We’re in a good place,” said Ana Ruiz, general manager of the open space district. “The project is done. The repairs are done. The public can enjoy the space again, the beauty, the history and the sense of place.”

What once was a hulk of cracked concrete, lead paint and rusting metal fittings is now a sleek, weather-proofed structure that should be fine for the next 30-50 years with minimal maintenance, according to district projections. The radar tower is sealed and not open to the public.

For many, the building is a familiar landmark seen by passengers on flights into San Jose, or from highways and neighborhoods when residents gaze south toward the hills.

Longtime residents remember the giant radar dish, which was painted in a white and reddish-orange checkerboard that slowly turned 24 hours a day on top of the building. The 120-foot-wide radar dish was removed in 1980 after the base closed. Some pieces were used on other military bases, while other parts were taken to Stockton and scrapped.

For others, preserving the old building represented an important way to respect and commemorate the service of the veterans who kept guard over America’s West Coast a generation after the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.

“The airmen there realized that we were one of the first lines of defense,” said Dr. Mike Cook, a former Air Force captain who worked as the dental officer at the base from 1976 to 1979.

“Back in the Cold War years you never knew,” said Cook, now retired in Fremont. “There were times the Russians would send planes close enough that we would have to scramble fighters to double-check them. They were always probing to make sure we were on guard.

“As events of the last two weeks have shown us,” he added, referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, “the world can be a dangerous place.”


Basim Jaber, a San Jose historian who has closely chronicled the history of Almaden Air Force Station, said he would one day like to see a small museum or education center built on the ground floor of the radar tower.

He acknowledges that would be expensive, with fire sprinklers, restrooms, modern building code upgrades and other renovations needed.

“I never like to say never,” said Jaber, who sits on the board of the nonprofit Umunhum Conservancy. “Somebody with deep pockets could bankroll it. There’s certainly something that can be done if the Midpen board of directors wanted to.”

Mount Umunhum, which takes its name from the Ohlone Indian word for hummingbird, is 3,486 feet tall.

After tearing down more than 80 crumbling barracks and other buildings, the district opened its summit to the public in 2017. It has become a popular destination with stunning views across the Bay Area and Monterey Bay — Silicon Valley’s version of Mount Diablo or Mount Tamalpais.


A $2 million renovation project has finished at the Mount Umunhum radar tower, an 85-foot-tall landmark in the hills south of San Jose. (Photo: Basim Jaber – Almaden Air Force Station Historian)

Ruiz said last year 44,650 cars traveled to the top, and thousands more hikers and bicyclists made the journey.

“It still remains a well-visited location,” she said. “It’s always been quite well used.”

At its peak, 120 Air Force personnel and their families lived at the station, which had homes, a gym, a swimming pool, a dentist’s chair, garages and even a bowling alley.

“It was a self-contained community,” Cook said. “The kids who lived up there took a bus down every day to school. It was one of the most beautiful spots in America. On one side you could see all the way to the Monterey Peninsula and the other side, there was the entirety of the Bay Area at your feet.”

After the station’s technology was made obsolete by satellites, the federal government sold the property to the open space district in 1986 for $260,000.

The district insisted that the Defense Department pay to demolish and haul away the old buildings, but the Pentagon resisted and the two agencies were stuck in a standoff. The summit remained padlocked and off limits for 31 years. Its 88 buildings became a crumbling ghost town contaminated with asbestos and lead paint.


The radar tower at Almaden Air Force Station atop Mount Umunhum in 1961. (Photo: Basim Jaber historical archives)

Former U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, D-Campbell, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, secured $3.2 million from Congress in 2009, which paid to remove the hazardous materials and demolish the buildings. In 2014, voters in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties passed Measure AA, a $300 million bond to fund the $25 million Mount Umunhum upgrade and 24 other projects around the district.

San Jose contractor George Bianchi Construction completed the $2 million tower renovation. It included repairs to large cracks in the concrete, replacing exposed, rusted rebar, and coating the exterior walls with a thin layer of new concrete.

Crews repaired the roof and installed new doors, a drainage system, and a guard rail. They also removed the asbestos and lead inside.

“It looks great,” Cook said. “They matched the original color. They put all the venting back. That’s what it looked like when I first showed up in 1976. It has everything but the big radar dish.”




darkstuff 


Location: NorCal
Total Likes: 12 likes




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Re: San Jose icon un-abandoned
< Reply # 6 on 4/20/2022 8:48 PM >
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This location has changed a lot since 2006! Here are a few exteriors and interiors. I miss the golden days of abandoned bay area military bases.

448375.jpg (49 kb, 426x640)
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/-/ooligan 


Location: Las Vegas area
Gender: Male
Total Likes: 278 likes


When in danger, when in doubt, RUN IN CIRCLES, SCREAM AND SHOUT!

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Re: San Jose icon un-abandoned
< Reply # 7 on 5/16/2022 11:35 PM >
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By the way, a former long-time member of uer.ca was very actively involved --critically involved even-- in ensuring the preservation of the RADAR Tower and current status of the site! Some of you long-timers will remember him.

Alas, a while back, for his own reasons, he terminated his uer.ca membership and thus to preserve his privacy, I'm not giving his screen name or real name, but he's an example of a uer.ca guy finding an off-limits, abandoned site interesting and valuable-enough to put in major, long-term work to get it preserved and open in some form or another to the public.

I'm advised by someone who would know that the interior of the FPS-24 Tower is cleaned/cleared-out, well-sealed, and that there are zero plans to open-up the interior to visitors. Could make for a nice little 'warming-hut' and museum for the visitors, but the Open Space District people --who as an entity, wanted the Tower removed along with all the other structures-- have no interest in doing that.

/-/ooligan




There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
UER Forum > US: Pacific Southwest > San Jose icon un-abandoned (Viewed 1117 times)


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