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Comments (0) Best Former Missile Launch Site Turned Viewpoint - 2010

A98C

A98C

17500 Mulholland Drive

Brentwood, CA 90049

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From 1956 to 1968, the spooks and bigwigs in the U.S. Army called it A98C, one of 16 heavily patrolled NIKE missile sites that protected Los Angeles during the Cold War from widely feared attack by the former evil empire, the Soviet Union. Tucked just above quiet suburban Encino and various celebrity homes about two miles west of the 405 and 101 freeway interchange near unpaved “dirt” Mulholland Drive, it’s now the strangest feature to be seen at San Vicente Mountain Park. The nonoperational anti-aircraft structure remains, and you can clamber up on the old radar tower to get a damn good look west at the sunset. Strange times, as this iconic leftover of the massive Cold War military budget, which once had L.A. bristling with pricey defenses, now acts as entry to a network of trails into the 20,000-acre “Big Wild” wilderness area. 17500 Mulholland Drive, Encino. —N. Jenssen

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LA MapNerd
LA MapNerd

Note, by the way, that San Vicente Mountain Park was where the missile guidance radars were located, but the missiles themselves were stationed (and would have launched from) the Sepulveda Basin, near what is now the California Air National Guard facility just off Victory Boulevard. It hosted both Nike-Ajax conventional missiles, and the later Nike-Hercules nuclear-tipped missiles.

(And the site's designation was LA96C, "Los Angeles site 96 Control." The LA98 Control site was atop Magic Mountain, a peak in the San Gabriel Mountains. Its Launch & Admin facility was in Soledad Canyon near Lang Station. For more details, see http://www.ftmac.org/lanike3.h... , the Fort MacArthur Museum's "Nike Sites of the Los Angeles Defense Area" page.)

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