Ancient Web: Moose Creek Nike Veterans Mapped Alaska’s Cold War Missile Sites

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Most people see a Cold War radar dome and think of a science-fiction prop. The veterans behind A-2-562.org remember where they slept, ate, worked, and watched the equipment.

Visit the Moose Creek Nike Site archive.

The website documents Site Tare, also called A-2-562, a Nike Hercules air-defense battery near Fairbanks, Alaska. According to the site's historical account, Battery A entered operation on May 10, 1959. It was part of a network protecting the Fairbanks and Eielson Air Force Base area during the Cold War.

Instead of treating the installation as one anonymous dot on a military map, the webmaster divides it into its working parts. The Integrated Fire Control page describes administration offices, the mess hall, dayroom, laundry, communications facilities, and radar equipment. It even preserves an unflattering nickname for the personnel inside the radar trailers: 'Scope Dopes.'

When a missile base becomes somebody's old neighborhood

The launcher-area account describes two launcher buildings, each capable of raising four missiles. Its equipment descriptions distinguish Alaska's above-ground missile storage from the underground arrangements at many other American installations. Photographs identify guard facilities, missiles on their launchers, and remains of the site after military use.

That geographical detail is easy to overlook. A Cold War installation in Alaska had practical problems unlike those of a comparable base in a warmer state. The photographic launcher tour connects those problems to actual buildings rather than leaving them as abstract engineering facts.

The archive also carries publications, references to other Nike sites, reunion material, and notices about veterans keeping in contact. The homepage discusses a 2022 reunion and interest in later gatherings. It is both a historical record and a continuing social connection.

The site's descriptions should be read as the account of its veteran contributors, not as an exhaustive official technical history. Its preservation value is precisely that it captures how an installation was experienced by people who spent their days inside it.

A defunct missile site might be a storage facility now. Online, it is still a workplace populated by names, routines, memories, and photographs.

Explore the site history and launcher photographs.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.