Radar Station
During the Cold War, the mountain was the site of Cottonwood Air Force Station, an early warning radar installation of the U.S. Air Force. Construction of the station began in 1956 and it went operational in early 1959. The radar tower was at the summit and the cantonment of the station was at 4,400 feet (1,300 m), about a mile (1.6 km) below the present base of the ski area on Radar Road. The 27-unit family housing area was built in the city of Cottonwood, on Butte Drive in the north end. The radar was significantly upgraded with a new tower in 1962, but the station was obsolete within three years and was deactivated. The buildings of Cottonwood AFS became a Job Corps center in 1965, supervised by the U.S. Forest Service.
Read more about this topic: Cottonwood Butte
Famous quotes containing the words radar and/or station:
“So I begin to understand why my mother’s radar is so sensitive to criticism. She still treads the well-worn ruts of her youth, when her impression of mother was of a woman hard to please, frequently negative, and rarely satisfied with anyone—least of all herself.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“It was evident that the same foolish respect was not here claimed for mere wealth and station that is in many parts of New England; yet some of them were the “first people,” as they are called, of the various towns through which we passed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)